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 '^.i/OJIlVD-JO
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 Jl Jictiatt in Jrcclmnb. 
 
 BY 
 
 BERNARD BARKER. 
 
 " For several virtues 
 Have I liked several women .... 
 
 "Without the which, this story 
 Were most impertinent." 
 
 Tempest (hex. iii,, sc. i.— Act i., so. 2.). 
 
 IN THREE VOLUiMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 'x^b" 
 
 SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO., 
 10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 
 
 1878. 
 
 lAll Rights Rese:-ved.^
 
 
 TO 
 
 ALICE 
 
 AND 
 
 AETHUE PAGE.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 3>©iO 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 1. THE COMING MAN . . . . . 1 
 
 XI. FAMILY AFFAIRS . . . . . .12 
 
 III. IN WHICH WE MEKT MISS BROOKE ... 24 
 
 IV. AFTER TEA ....... 38 
 
 V. dick's new idol ...... 57 
 
 VI. AT THE HALL ...... 72 
 
 Vn. "a PRETTY PIECE OP BUSINESS" ... 88 
 V'in. OSCAR DALE ....... 98 
 
 IX. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE . . . .114 
 
 X. A CHANGE OF SCENE . . . . .131 
 
 XI. "man proposes" ..... 153 
 
 XII. gossip and gossips . . . . .166 
 
 XIII. " oh, DOTH NOT A MEETING LIKE THIS MAKE 
 
 AMENDS !" ..... 196 
 
 XIV. CONVALESCENCE ...... 225
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 -ooja^oo- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COMING MAN. 
 
 ICK ELIOT, our hero, was chris- 
 tened after Dick Steele, Addison's 
 2:00 d- for -Uttle fag and friend. 
 Of Steele, as a schoolboy, Thackeray tells 
 much the same tale as we are obliged to 
 tell of his humble namesake — videlicet, he 
 was notoriously idle; was whipped deservedly 
 a great many times ; and, indeed, was con- 
 tinually coming to the flogging-block. "He 
 
 V VOL. I. 1
 
 ELIOT TEE YOUNGEB. 
 
 had very good parts of his own," adds the 
 idler's biographer ; but, alas ! it seems only in 
 a corporeal sense that these were brought to 
 light by his preceptors. 
 
 So it was with our Dick. Everybody 
 admitted that '' that boy of Eliot's " (Eliot of 
 The Leas) was an intelligent lad enough, but 
 the mischief was that his schoolmasters could 
 make nothing of him, save and except an 
 example. 
 
 As regards lessons, no youthful Boeotian, 
 hopelessly acclimatised, and dulled by the 
 thickness of his native air, could have been 
 more sluggish, more muddle-headed. So 
 little did he flourish under the ferule, that 
 his father, in his whimsical way, was wont 
 to say Dick's Upas-tree was the birch. 
 
 Not that Eliot ^wre — careless and clever, a 
 dreamer of dreams and a colourer of pipes 
 — greatly took to heart his son's academic 
 failings. Eather on the contrary. A theory
 
 TBI: C031ING MAN. 
 
 of his (one of many) was that almost all 
 
 brilliant men were but dull boys, and amid 
 
 his multitude of favourite projects was the 
 
 idea of compiling a History of Illustrious 
 
 Dunces, For this embryonic work he had 
 
 already enrolled a strong host of supporters 
 
 — Swift, Steele, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Scott, 
 
 Burns, Babbage, Marryatt, Newton, Napoleon, 
 
 Wellington, Clive, Grant, and Bismarck 
 
 being among the ranks of his recruits ; but, 
 
 although his forces were thus mustered, they 
 
 had not hitherto been brought into action, 
 
 nor did there seem any immediate likelihood 
 
 of their being called upon for active service. 
 
 " Dick !" Mr. Eliot would exclaim, on any 
 
 remonstrance at the- lad's laziness; "why, 
 
 what's the matter with Dick ? To my mind, 
 
 he possesses all, or nearly all, that goes to 
 
 form The Perfect Boy — Helps's arch-urchin ! 
 
 He consumes meat and sleep in large and 
 
 regular instalments ; he has severely licked 
 
 1 o 
 
 J. — ^
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 young Billy Bullimore, the keeper's son ; he 
 has robbed, artistically and impartially, all 
 neighbouring nests and orchards ; he shies 
 stones as effectively as did David himself; 
 and he carries a four-bladed knife, two fish- 
 hooks, a piece of whipcord, sundry buttons, a 
 bottle of liquorice-water, three-ha'porth of 
 gunpowder, and eleven bits of slate-pencil in 
 his'trouser-pockets. What more can you ask 
 of one at his age ?" 
 
 Time passed. The seasons came and went. 
 Spring, a young mother, with tender firstlings 
 at her breast and a lapful of baby-blossoms ; 
 Summer, the ripe-lipped matron, laughing at 
 her brood of rosy beauties ; Autumn, the 
 maiden aunt, captious, capricious, and queer 
 of temper — now smiling, now scolding at her 
 dead sister's legacy ; lastly. Winter, the 
 shrill-voiced step-dame, beneath whose iron 
 rule and cold continual frown the poor little 
 orphans wither and die, and the world looks
 
 THE COMING MAN. 
 
 bare and hopeless. Ah me ! what seasons 
 they were, those seasons of our childhood. 
 What suns in July, what snows in December. 
 Is summer still as bright, winter as white, as 
 of yore ? Do the larks and thrushes sing- as 
 sweetly, do the waits play as delightfully — 
 half as delightfully ? — as in the days and 
 nights gone by ? Dis done ! my brother of 
 
 five "and-forty, my sister of five-and 
 
 Well, well ! The whole subject is fraught 
 with pain and perplexity, and deuce knows 
 where 'twould land us, Dick Eliot, at least, 
 was in the happy heyday of his youth, and 
 disported himself after the unthinking, 
 midge-like manner of his years. 
 
 '' Th' young marster," quoth the keeper, with 
 he true East- Anglian drawl, '' fare to be afoot 
 a'most orl the day, tharra' due !" and, certainly, 
 throughout his holidays, our hero was but 
 little within doors. From dawn to dusk — 
 " from the risino^ of the lark to the lodo^iuo' of
 
 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 the lamb " — he would roam the neighbouring 
 woods and meadows in quest of adventure, 
 eating an abnormal quantity of blackberries, 
 and consuming hips and haws with the un- 
 reasoning voracity of a hedge-sparrow. The 
 pleasures of the plain (Norfolk is flat) were 
 his in abundance. At fourteen he became 
 the proud possessor of horse and gun, which 
 he kept in constant exercise, as ubiquitous 
 as the Uhlan with the one, as lawless as the 
 Franc-Tireur with the other ; and at sixteen 
 he left school to read for a term with the 
 Reverend Paul Boddyman, rector of his native 
 parish, previous to entering college. 
 
 One wild October afternoon, a month or so 
 after his emancipation from Rugby, Dick 
 Eliot was drifting about the rambling grounds 
 that extended from the front of his father's 
 house to the highway. Along the left side of 
 these grounds, and dividing them from a 
 small pasture called the '' Home Piece," was a
 
 THE COMING 3IAN. 
 
 row of gigantic poplars, through whose gusty 
 spires the west wind was now roaring and 
 swirHng with a sea-like sublimity of sound. 
 A flying sky — ragged with shifting squadrons 
 of clouds, that sped silently and sullenly 
 across it, like the forlorn fugitives of a broken 
 army — was overhead ; the air was in a whirl 
 of falling, eddying leaves ; the unlatched door 
 of an adjacent hen-house was dashing 
 itself madly against the wall, whilst the 
 hens themselves, with upturned feathers, 
 like upturned garments, were scuttling 
 to and fro, ruffled out of all shape and 
 decency. 
 
 In the midst of this breeding tumult and 
 twihght, whittling a fresh-cut stick with a 
 good deal of aimless energy, anon pausing to 
 gaze absently up at the black colony founcled 
 by the rooks in the giddy, wind-rocked elms, 
 Dick Eliot placidly awaited the wonted six- 
 o'clock summons to dinner, which, either by
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 sound of bell or word of mouth, he relied 
 would duly reach him. 
 
 Not a bad-looking youngster, by any means, 
 was our hero at sixteen. Plenty of elastic 
 life in his limbs, plenty of pluck in the outlook 
 of his clear, grey eyes, plenty of humanity, 
 warm and womanly (perhaps too warm, too 
 womanly) in his heart, and a good deal of 
 unbroached ability in his head. At school 
 he had very properly been pronounced a 
 dunce — an epithet he had earned, however, 
 not through incapacity, but through simple 
 idleness and the lack of that appreciation for 
 learning which only comes to us when our 
 best opportunities are gone by, man's 
 taste for solid book-lore being for the most 
 part an essentially artificial and acquired 
 one. 
 
 But although Dick had sto^^ped his ears, 
 Ulysses-like, to the voice of that matter-of- 
 fact syren, Minerva, he had by no means
 
 THE COMING MAN. 
 
 wholly ignored literature. His bye-reading, 
 indeed, had been close and varied. 
 From eight to ten years of age he had slain 
 giants with Jack, championed forlorn damsels, 
 rescued princesses, and been a very Brigham 
 Young of bigamy in the number of his 
 marriages with kings' only daughters. From 
 ten to twelve he had followed the profession 
 of a Boy Hunter or Young Yager, scientifically 
 potting the beast of the field ; and anon, by 
 way of obituary, enlivening the camp-fire 
 with instructive scraps from the natural 
 histor}^ of the deceased, setting forth his 
 habits as he lived, and shrewdly exposing all 
 his little ways and weaknesses, after the 
 well-known yager wont. 
 
 From twelve to fourteen he had lived at 
 open warfare with that section of coloured 
 humanity known as the Kedskin, bagging 
 bufildoes, and " whipping his weight " into 
 grizzly bears whenever Crow or Pawnee was
 
 10 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 not at hand, or the prairie didn't happen to 
 be on fire. 
 
 From fourteen upwards, his previous 
 roving Hfe in literature would seem to have 
 unsettled him for any fixed calling. He 
 lauofhed at locksmiths with Ains worth's "Jack 
 Sheppard ;" made love and prize-money with 
 Marryatt's midshipmen ; fought and bled 
 (profusely) with Lever's ensigns and Grant's 
 peninsular veterans; dined, drank, and 
 duelled with Dumas' immortal musketeers. 
 
 Arrived at sixteen he had almost grown 
 callous to the battle, murder, and sudden 
 death of familiar fiction, and the most moving 
 accidents by flood and field were not now 
 moving enough to kindle him as of yore. 
 Like the little girl who decided that the 
 world was hollow because she discovered that 
 her doll was stufied with sawdust, a certain 
 premature scepticism had crept in upon him. 
 Those military Crichtons, those gods and
 
 TEE COMING MAN. 11 
 
 heroes of the backwoods and the prairies, 
 were gradually regarded with the cold eye of 
 suspicioD, and their reputation, sensitive as a 
 woman's, withered beneath the unkindly 
 shadow of doubt. The old idols were over- 
 thrown and shattered: Dick was waiting for 
 new ones.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 FAMILY AFFAIRS. 
 
 jOOK Mrs. Dray CO tt being dead, 
 there were little Dora and the 
 four others thrown on the hands 
 of that inefficient father of theirs — hands 
 lifted in mute but eloquent protest at 
 the unexpected magnitude of their charge. 
 We say unexpected, for even had Mr. Dray- 
 cott known, he had never until now realised, 
 the fact of having five children. It was as 
 though they had all come to him — a quintette 
 of overgrown babies — at a birth. Sitting 
 beside his afilicted hearth, and hearing the 
 voices of the youngsters in the garden, the
 
 FAMILY AFFAIRS. 13 
 
 widower plaintively owned that the world 
 was one — or rather several — too many for 
 him. " Blessed is the man that hath his 
 quiver full of them," murmured the rector, 
 with that want of tact so characteristic of 
 our would-be consolers on such occasions ; 
 but, like Rachel mourning for her children, 
 Mr. Draycott had refused to be comforted — 
 with the difference that, ' whereas Kachel 
 lamented their absence, Mr. Draycott de- 
 plored their presence. They were an em- 
 barrassment of riches that at once dazed and 
 depressed him. 
 
 Considering the nature of the man, weak 
 and comfort-loving as it was, it can scarcely 
 be wondered at that the idea of shiftinor Ins 
 burden to other shoulders by means of a 
 second marriage should early have occurred 
 to him. 
 
 " Some nice, quiet, healthy, homely, re- 
 spectable person," mused Mr. Draycott,
 
 14 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 " who would see that the children had what 
 they wanted, and who wouldn't mind taking 
 them to church, and — er — and going with 
 
 them in the way they should go Dear, 
 
 dear ! what a blessing such a one would be ! 
 what a boon for them ! what a relief for me /" 
 Had Sydney Draycott been a less indolent 
 individual, he might possibly have met with 
 the object of his desires, or something suf- 
 ficiently approaching it, among the maiden 
 ladies of the county families ; but although 
 a zealous and artistic diner, he was not 
 much of a diner-out, nor did he greatly advo- 
 cate either the paying or receiving of visits. 
 Surrounded by his books — such pleasing 
 classics, for example, as Les Lettres Athe- 
 niennes and Le Sopha, of M. Crebillon fils, 
 with the more curious productions of current 
 French romance continually arriving — sur- 
 rounded by such works, and by a choice 
 sketch or two after the " fleshly " school of
 
 FAMILY AFFAIRS. 15 
 
 Etty smiling at him from the walls, Draycott 
 of Draycott Manor was content to play the 
 recluse. Hitherto the discreet management 
 of his deceased partner — a clever and prac- 
 tical woman — had secured him ao-ainst the in- 
 vasion of those young barbarians, his children; 
 but now, on a sudden, all this was changed. 
 The acquaintance of his offspring was, in a 
 measure, forced on him. The mother being- 
 gone, they turned, with the unreasoning in- 
 stinct of the lower animals, to their survivinsr 
 parent. It is obvious, then, how seriously he 
 was affected by his M'ife's loss. 
 
 In this emergency he applied to his cousin, 
 Mrs. Eliot of The Leas, who, amono-st other 
 things, impressed him with the necessity of 
 engaging a governess for the training of his 
 olive branches, the two eldest, Dora and Tom 
 (twins), being already in their tenth year, 
 and sadly needing some substitute for the 
 maternal guidance they had lost.
 
 16 ELIOT TEE YOUNGEB. 
 
 " As you will, my dear cousin, as you will," 
 conceded Mi\ Draycott, with an edifying air 
 of resignation ; " a governess be it. I'm sure 
 if the — er— the children want such a thing, 
 their father is the last person to make any 
 objection. Nobody shall accuse me of being 
 other than an indulgent parent. Let them 
 have a governess, by all means." 
 
 '' If they cried for the moon you'd give it 
 'em, wouldn't you, Draycott ?" said Mr. Eliot, 
 lazily lifting his blue eyes as he spoke. 
 " Onlv to cry for the moon — the days of 
 Endymion being over — is rather an ana- 
 chronism. Here's the rector, however ; per- 
 haps he can help us to an eligible young 
 woman." 
 
 " Not too young, Charles," softly interposed 
 Mrs. Eliot, laying her hand on her husband's 
 arm. 
 
 " My dear, I said an eligible young woman. 
 If she were too young she wouldn't be
 
 FA2IILY AFFAIRS. 17 
 
 eligible, of course. Well, Boddyman ? Can 
 you recommend anyone ?" 
 
 But the rector (a large, full-blooded man, 
 amiably orthodox) was unable to assist them 
 out of their difficulty, and suggested the 
 expedience of having recourse to the columns 
 of the Times. 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of advertisement," 
 said Mr. Eliot. " What do yoii. think, Dray- 
 cott ?" 
 
 " My dear fellow, let me be left entirely on 
 one side. Don't consult, don't consider me in 
 the slightest- — ^9«5 le moindre du monde, as we 
 used to say in — er — in Paris. The children's 
 welfare above all. Whatever little sacrifices 
 I may be called on to make are — er — are 
 nothing. Act, my friends, as though Sydney 
 Draycott were not." 
 
 "The best thing, perhaps, we could do," 
 muttered Mr. Eliot, sotto voce. 
 
 " My requirements," continued the widowei , 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 irrepressibly full, as usual, of himself, " are 
 few and easily satisfied. What those require- 
 ments are, you already know. Seclusion, 
 simplicity, literature, and — er — and the arts." 
 (Here a graceful flourish of Sydney Dray- 
 cott's white hand indicated the bookcase and 
 the portraits of nymphs cm naturel that em- 
 bellished the walls.) " Indeed, I occasionally 
 court the Muse myself. Tenui musam, Boddy- 
 man, meditamur avena." 
 
 " MecUtcmmr avena," murmured the rector, 
 thinking of his own small literary and 
 domestic difficulties ; and thereat, or shortly 
 after, the conference was broken up, it being 
 finally decided that the agency of the Times 
 should be invoked on behalf of the little 
 Draycotts and their educational wants, whilst 
 the widower's eldest sister, a maiden lady, 
 should be invited, pro tem., to superintend the 
 household. 
 
 Some three weeks after the foregoing con-
 
 FAMILY AFFAIRS. 19 
 
 versation, a governess was secured — a Miss 
 Lydia Brooke. This lady, well recommended 
 as to character and capacity, was stated to be 
 in her eight-and-twentieth year, and ad- 
 mirably adapted for tlie situation she had 
 sought. Her arrival was announced for the 
 iOth of October — the day on which our hero 
 was presented to the reader in the garden ab 
 The Leas ; and it was during dinner, on the 
 •evening of that same day, that Dick Eliot 
 found himself personally concerned in her 
 coming. 
 
 How this happened may be told in half-a- 
 dozen words. 
 
 Mr. Draycott, needing his carriage and 
 coachman for his own convenience (the lOtli 
 being the date of some special musical 
 assembly at Norwich), found himself unable 
 to send over to Hethercote Station to meet 
 the train by which Miss Brooke was expected 
 to arrive. Thus situated, he despatched a 
 
 2—2
 
 20 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 delicately perfumed note to his neighbour 
 and connexion, Charles Eliot, elaborately 
 explanatory of his dilemma, and ingenuously 
 askinof assistance out of it. 
 
 "A begging-letter, my dear," said Mr 
 Eliot, tossing the missive across the dinner- 
 table to his wife. " Is it a case of real dis- 
 tress, or merely an imposition ?" 
 
 " Why in the world doesn't Cousin Sydney 
 send one of his own people ?" asked Mrs. 
 Eliot, glancing through the note. " It's 
 really quite too provoking he should be con- 
 tinually applying to us for things ! What- 
 ever you may answer now, Charles, another 
 time I do hope you'll avoid giving way in 
 the slightest to such unreasonable appeals." 
 
 " My dear, I'll be firm as a rock, inflexible 
 as Khadamanthus' self — another time. Just 
 at present, however, I think we may as well 
 be indulgent. You see, he says the dog-cart 
 is out of repair, and the children's basket-
 
 FA MIL Y AFFAIRS. 21 
 
 trap— what does he say about the basket- 
 trap T 
 
 " Oh, some frivolous excuse or other. But 
 whom have we to send, Charles ? There's old 
 
 Jordan's bad leg " 
 
 '' Can't send that," interjected Mr. Eliot, in 
 a, tone of grave remonstrance. 
 
 " Don't be absurd, sir. Then there's Bulli- 
 more is engaged, and as for Simmons, you 
 
 know " 
 
 ''I'll go," said Dick, suddenly looking up 
 from his soup. "■ Simmons can harness 
 Atalanta in the dog-cart, and she'll take me 
 to Hethercote in a jiffy." 
 
 " One jiffy equals twenty minutes, doesn't 
 it, Dick T asked his father. " It's so long 
 you see, since I went to school, that I quite 
 forget my tables of measurement. Do you 
 remember, Mrs. Eliot, the value of a jiffy?" 
 
 " Really, Charles, I wisJi you would show 
 a little less levity —at least, at meals. It's
 
 22 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 quite the same whether we are alone, as now, 
 or whether we have servants in the room. 
 And servants, you should recollect, are so apt 
 to misinterpret that kind of thing. Besides, 
 as I've repeatedly told you, that thoughtless 
 cracking of jokes has long since ceased to be 
 considered good style. I'm sure you heard 
 nothing of the sort at Lady Muffle Drum- 
 raond's the other evening." 
 
 " I didn't indeed !" sighed Mr. Eliot, 
 looking blank at the recollection. " Any- 
 thing more funereal, more soul-depressing, 
 more calculated to age a man than her lady- 
 ship's dinners, it would be simply impossible 
 to survive. What with the heavy dishes and 
 discourse at table, and the dirgelike singing 
 and playing of the Misses Muffle Drummonds 
 afterwards, those gatherings at the Hall are 
 the very abomination of desolation — most 
 musical, most melancholy !" 
 
 " Charles, ^ you surprise me! Pray re-
 
 FAMILY AFFAIRS. 23 
 
 member of whom you are speaking ! I think 
 we had better change the subject." 
 
 " With all my heart, my dear Alicia. 
 About meeting Miss What's-her-name, the 
 governess, then ? I suppose Dick may as 
 well o-o ?" 
 
 " Of course he must go, if there's absolutely 
 no one else at hand ; but I ivill say it's rather 
 too bad that the task of fetchino; this Miss 
 Brooke should be left to him. Besides, it 
 looks so odd." 
 
 Mr. Eliot wisely forebore prolonging the 
 discussion, and, dinner being ended, Dick 
 withdrew to superintend the harnessing of 
 his mare Atalanta, a lean-headed, rakish- 
 looking chestnut, behind whose nimble heels 
 he was shortly scudding rapidly along the 
 dark cross-country roads on his way to 
 Hethercote station.
 
 CHAPTER IIT. 
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 
 
 HE clamorous wind-chorus that all 
 the afternoon had been gathering 
 in sound and fury was now 
 thundering tumultuously across the flat 
 league of land that lay betw^een Dick Eliot 
 and the sea. But even above the hubbub of 
 the gale Dick fancied, from time to time, he 
 could catch the hoarse undertone of ocean, 
 whose trampling surges were for ever sucking 
 and sapping the cliff-line of the bleak east 
 coast, and the odour of whose foam-flecked 
 breakers blew so freshl}^ on his face. 
 
 With his hat drawn down, his coat-collar
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET 3IISS BROOKE. 25 
 
 turned up, aud the rays of the gig-lamps 
 gleaming along the shuddering hedges, our 
 hero sped swiftly forward, by farm and 
 homestead, anon rousing the surly challenge 
 of some kennelled yard-dog, or awaking a 
 drowsy cock to premature crowing. Past 
 Draycott Manor, with its leaf-littered avenue 
 and cowering shrubberies ; past the gabled 
 rectory, all a-shiver in its garniture of ivy ; 
 past the dark church, and on througli the 
 solitary street of the village ; until at length 
 the lights of Hethercote station flashed 
 before him, and he pulled up his mare with 
 the comfortable conviction that, considering 
 the weather, they had done the distance in 
 remarkably good time. 
 
 Leaving horse and trap in charge of a con- 
 venient rustic, Dick entered the station, and 
 made his way to the outer platform, which 
 the wind had swept clear of all save one 
 tenacious porter — a semi-seafaring individual
 
 26 ELIOT TUB YOUNGER. 
 
 (like most of the natives of the neighbour- 
 hood), who took the gales the gods provided 
 in a spirit of stolid acquiescence. 
 
 " Rough night, porter !" 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir I Coarse times out yinder ;"" 
 and the man nodded his head significantly 
 coastward. " They ha' got their hands full 
 theer, yo\N may take yor Bible oath ! T'ain't 
 orl on 'em, Fll lay, as '11 see daylight agin i' 
 this warld." 
 
 The pregnant simplicity of the speaker's 
 words, tragic in their very homeliness, was a 
 characteristic of local speech Dick had not 
 often met with and marked. The poetry of 
 English provincialism lingers yet among these 
 unvarnished men of the coast, who dwell ever 
 within sound of the sea, and live to learn the 
 meaning of its many voices. Dick would 
 willingly enough have continued the conver- 
 sation, but just then the approach of the 
 expected train was signalled by the prolonged
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET MISS HE OOZE. 27 
 
 scream of the labouring engine, which, pant- 
 ing and puffing, dragged its passive retinue 
 of carriages slowly up to the side of the little 
 platform. 
 
 " Heth'cote, Hetli'cote, Hetli cote /" roared 
 the seafaring porter, in a hoarse, stentorian 
 voice (as one who shoutetli " ship a-hoy "), 
 and heads were popped out of successive 
 carriage-windows with the mechanical alacrity 
 of a conjuring trick. 
 
 What Dick looked for in the new governess 
 was (as he mentally phrased it) " a thin and 
 thirtyish sort of woman," severe and sober- 
 hued as an owl of Minerva ; such, in fact, as 
 he had seen at Lady Muffle Drummond's, in 
 the person of that Arid One who, erewhile, 
 imparted knowdedge to her ladyship's minor 
 daughters. Nobody, however, of this 
 description appeared to be present, and Dick 
 moved from one end of the train to the other 
 without encounterino' anything- resemblino;
 
 28 ELIOT TUB YOUNGER. 
 
 the preconceived object of his search. 
 Meanwhile, sundry inhabitants of Hethercote 
 and the adjoining parishes had alighted from 
 the carriages — farming- folk mostly — who 
 betrayed a respectful recognition of '' Young 
 Squire Eliot o' The Leas," as they passed him 
 ■on their way out. Seeing that he had no 
 time to lose, Dick began to " try back," taking 
 ci rapid glance at each compartment in travers- 
 ing anew the platform. Cattle dealers, 
 *' commercials," fish salesmen, manufacturers, 
 marl^eters, pork-butchers, poulterers and — 
 
 " I beg your pardon " 
 
 (It was the end of an umbrella that touched 
 him, and it was a woman's voice that 
 addressed liim. Dick halted abruptly.) 
 
 " Excuse my asking ; but do you happen to 
 come from Mr. Draycott — -from Draycott 
 Manor T 
 
 "Yes," said Dick, bowing, and, to tell the 
 truth, blushing. "Miss Brooke, I believe?"
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 20- 
 
 " Exactly ; Miss Brooke, as you say. But 
 only fancy, I've just dropped my ticket here 
 somewhere, and, do you know, I can't find it 
 anywhere. Suppose you jump in — you don't 
 mind, do you ? — and help me to look for 
 it. 
 
 A clear, voluble utterance — slightly foreigu 
 in its accent — expressive eyes, and manner, 
 unreserved, unaffected to a fault. 
 
 Dick at once opened the door and entered 
 the compartment, of which Miss Brooke, it 
 seemed, had hitherto been the sole occupant. 
 Under the cushions, under the seats, under 
 package and parcel, in every place possible 
 and impossible, did Dick Eliot and his com- 
 panion seek for the missing ticket — but all 
 unavailingly. So zealous, indeed, was their 
 search, so earnest and engrossing, that neither 
 noticed, until it was too late for remedy, that 
 the train had once more been set in motion, 
 and that it was now gliding stealthily from
 
 30 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 out the station. Had Dick been alone, he 
 would have risked the leap to the ground 
 without hesitation, but for a lady such a step 
 was obviously impracticable. 
 
 Dick looked at Miss Brooke ; Miss Brooke 
 looked at Dick. Finally, the absurdity of 
 their situation struck them so forcibly that 
 they broke into a simultaneous laugh. 
 
 " Ah, del de mon dme ! Quel malheur f" 
 exclaimed the lady, shrugging her shoulders 
 in serio-comic despair. " Whatever are we to 
 do, Mr. Draycott V 
 
 '' Well, you see, we must go on to Norwich 
 now," answered Dick Ehot, without thinking 
 it worth while correcting the conclusion Miss 
 Brooke had jumped to as regards his name — 
 a not unnatural mistake. " I'm awfully sorry, 
 of course." 
 
 " Of course. Elopement wasn't your idea, 
 was it ? But tell me — what time are we due 
 in Norwich ?"
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 31 
 
 ** In — in — in about half-an-liour, Miss 
 Brooke," stammered Dick, rather over- 
 powered by the lady's perfect self-possession, 
 her freedom of address, and the full-orbed 
 scrutiny of her glance. " That'll be just nine 
 •o'clock." 
 
 '' And then ?" 
 
 Dick hesitated. Should he escort this 
 •elegant, glib-tongued governess to his Aunt 
 Deborah'o, or should he follow the manly 
 traditions of his forefathers and " put up " at 
 the Ke^jent. A vision of that straightlaced 
 lady, his mother's maiden sister, rose before 
 him, and he faltered. 
 
 Aunt Deborah was a woman who prided 
 herself on her *' nice sense of propriety," 
 maintaining that in these days it " behoved 
 one to be circumspect." She had, moreover, 
 an awkward habit of' disapproving" of things, 
 
 and instinctively Dick felt that she would 
 •disapprove of Miss Brooke and himself,
 
 32 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 jointly and severally, at nine o'clock at 
 night. 
 
 " Eh hien ! And then ?" 
 
 " Then I vote — I mean, I think, we'd 
 better go to the Kegent — the Kegent Hotel, 
 you know, Miss Brooke — and either there, or 
 somewhere, we can hire a trap to drive home 
 with." 
 
 " Famous ! At least, it would be if I could 
 only find that wretched ticket. They'll 
 excuse us, bj^-the-bye, at Draycott Manor, 
 won't they, when they learn what it is has 
 kept us from coming earlier? The children, 
 of course, will be gone to bed, dear little 
 things ! But there's Mr. Draycott — what 
 will lie say ?" 
 
 " Oh, he's out," said Dick, who had not, 
 however, heard where it was that the master 
 of the Manor had actually gone. " Won't be 
 back, very likely, till after we are, and even if 
 Hal-lo !"
 
 IN WniCE WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 33 
 
 This exclamation was caused by a move- 
 ment on the part of his companion, who, in 
 the act of placing her umbrella in the net- 
 rack overhead, let fall from among its folds 
 the veritable railway-ticket they had so fruit- 
 lessly sought after at Hethercote. 
 
 " Tiens ! Did you ever T ejaculated Miss 
 Brooke. " That comes, do you know, of 
 being lazy. If I had only sewn the elastic on 
 the umbrella^ as I ought to have done, before 
 leaving home, it wouldn't be gaping open as 
 it is now, and I shouldn't have had my ticket 
 swallowed up, and you needn't have come 
 into the carriage, and neither of us would 
 have been obliged to go on to Norwich to- 
 night in this absurd fashion. It's all in a 
 chain, like the old w^oman who wanted to 
 get over the stile, with the pig, and the dog, 
 and the stick, and the fire, and water, and 
 the rest of it — pas vrai f 
 
 Miss Brooke had a dazzlingly rapid mode 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 ELIOT THE YOUNGEF. 
 
 of speaking, intermiDgling lier prattle witli> 
 little personal queries and appeals in a way 
 that was singularly attractive to most people 
 she talked with, especially to most men, and 
 giving one the idea that her conversation was 
 much more spirituel than it ever was in 
 reality. Those who attempted to analyse her 
 speech in the cold blood of absence or after- 
 thought were puzzled to find where lay the 
 wit that so charmed them when the words 
 had flowed fresh from her lips, and many a 
 man had been sorely disconcerted when, 
 striving to repeat to expectant friends some 
 recent sally of Lydia Brooke's, he discovered 
 bow tame it came forth in the quota- 
 tion. 
 
 " The young woman with the influential 
 eyes," was the phrase by which a critical ac- 
 quaintance had once characterised Miss Brooke;: 
 and certainly it was her eyes that were her 
 speciality — her centres of attraction, so to
 
 IN WEICR WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 35 
 
 speak. Large, dark, and lustrous, they caught 
 one's attention immediately, and having caught 
 it, monopolised it. But for them, their owner 
 might have been a pretty enough person, but 
 assuredly not the exceptionally good-looking 
 woman she was. A certain autumnal ripe- 
 ness of form and warmth of colour had come 
 to her with the development of her third 
 decade ; a fulness of limb, a shapely breadth 
 of bosom, a rich, afternoon sort of glow in lip 
 and cheek, an aggregate harmony that set 
 the imaginative few thinking of October 
 woods, with all their sun-dyed bravery and 
 sensuous flush of foliao^e. 
 
 Contemplating the manifold good gifts of 
 his handsome vis-a-vis, Dick Eliot even for- 
 got his trouble concerning his mare Atalanta, 
 which he had left waiting: outside Hethercote 
 Station in charge of one who, although weU 
 aware of its ownership, would probably keep it 
 standing a long time ere his homely wits 
 
 3—2
 
 36 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 would suggest to him the expediency of 
 driving it back to The Leas. 
 
 As for Miss Brooke, she was in nowise 
 discomposed by her situation. A woman of 
 eight -and-twenty, our hero (a dozen years 
 younger) was but a chikl in her sight — rather 
 a nice-looking boy than otherwise, and one to 
 whom it were well to make herself agreeable, 
 he being (so she had decided) son and heir 
 to her future employer, the widowed master of 
 Draycott Manor. Not that it was any effort 
 for Miss Brooke to prove attractive. Be- 
 longing to that class of persons who, " being 
 natural, naturally please," she gained, like 
 He of Cawdor, golden opinions from all sorts 
 of people — opinions as unwarranted by any 
 intrinsic moral merit as those acquired by 
 the Scottish Thane. For Lydia Brooke had as 
 little of inward and spiritual grace as can well 
 be imagined. Without being at all actively 
 or openly unrighteous, she was nevertheless
 
 IN WHICH WE MEET MISS BROOKE. 37 
 
 as passively irreligious, as indifferent to virtue 
 in the abstract, as a new-born babe. Like 
 a babe, too, she had no real development of 
 conscience, and her conduct was largely in- 
 fluenced by that intelligent spirit of self- 
 gratification which is one the clearly defined 
 characteristic distinguishing the human bant- 
 ling from the offspring of the brute-beast. 
 With a greater intellectual endowment, such 
 a woman would probably have obtained a 
 widespread influence and notoriety, an evil 
 pre-eminence among her fellow-creatures ; but, 
 with only average mental capacities, and an 
 easy, epicurean temperament, she was accepted 
 by society at her presumptive worth — namely, 
 as a governess for society's children. Her 
 qualifications for this position (besides those 
 natural ones already indicated) were based 
 on a prolonged residence abroad, and the 
 pregnant fact of her family connection with a 
 deceased archdeacon.
 
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 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AFTER TEA. 
 
 [HOSO has visited Norwich will 
 haply remember that its chief 
 station (that of Thorpe) lies not 
 exactly out of humanity's reach, but suf- 
 ficiently far from the centre of the city to 
 make the missing of trains a thing of fatal 
 facility for its worthy inhabitants, and eke 
 for the stranger within its gates. This 
 station is place, indeed, on the further side 
 of the river Yare, whose sluggish tide there- 
 after laps the wooden piles and dingy ware- 
 house walls of the old East- Anglian capital, 
 creeping torpidly between black and squalid
 
 AFTER TEA. 39 
 
 ■buildings, rotten and rat-riddled, the empty 
 window-frames of which look blankly down 
 •on the dark waters, like the eyeless sockets 
 of blind, uncleanly beggars. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the distance of 
 the railway station from the Kegent Hotel, 
 Miss Brooke decided on walking in preference 
 to taking a cab, owning, with a frankness 
 more than feminine, that she wanted to 
 stretch her legs. Dick readily admitted the 
 validity of this motive, but the straightfor- 
 ward English in which it was expressed con- 
 £rmed him in his policy of avoiding a 
 collision with Aunt Deborah. That estimable 
 woman would assuredly "blush for" one who 
 could so far forget " what was due to 
 •decorum " as to speak with such an entire 
 ■absence of ladylike equivocation. 
 
 It was a Saturday night that found our 
 two friends in Norwich, and a Norv/ich Satur- 
 day (market-day) fills the city to overflowing,
 
 40 ELIOT THE YOUXGER. 
 
 skimming the whole county of its cream. 
 Then comes the Norfolk farmer, to buy, to 
 sell, or " do a deal." Then come the Norfolk 
 farmer's wife and daughters, in toilettes of 
 strange, barbaric splendour ; for Solomon in 
 all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. 
 Bulky men, " who put their trust in bullocks 
 and in beeves," produce endless " blocks " in 
 the pedestrian traffic by gathering together 
 in mid-pavement, exchanging samples of corn 
 from the depths of dingy bags, and stolidly 
 ignoring the fretful efforts of the much-vexed 
 citizen to cleave his way through their obtuse 
 assemblies. Outlandish accents fill the air i 
 provincialism is rampant ; an agricultural 
 carnival usurps the city. 
 
 Wending their way through the busy 
 bright-lit streets. Miss Brooke and our hero 
 attracted more than one critical glance as 
 they passed by, and many were the alien eyes 
 that expressed approval of Dick's companion^
 
 AFTER TEA. 41 
 
 Of this Dick soon became aware, althoao^h 
 the lady herself betrayed no consciousness- 
 of being an object of any special regard. 
 With a boy's arrogance and unwisdom, the 
 young gentleman evinced, by lowering brow 
 and haughty lip, his imperial displeasure at 
 the presumption of the public, not knowing 
 that a pretty face is as little to be made h, 
 monopoly of as the sunlight itself — that a 
 thing of beauty (especially of female beauty) 
 is a joy for everybody. Perhaps Miss Brooke 
 may have noticed something of this artless 
 display of resentment, and have been amused 
 at the exhibition. At all events, it was with 
 a smile that she met our hero's aspiring glance 
 whenever he lifted his eyes to hers. 
 
 Arrived at the Begent, and ensconced in 
 a corner of the coffee-room, Miss Brooks 
 proceeded to refresh herself with a cup of 
 tea, which Dick, at the lady's express invita- 
 tion, had the gratification of sharing. True,
 
 42 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 he scalded his throat with the first sip of the 
 fragrant Chinese brew, that seemed, for the 
 nonce, equally to inebriate as to cheer ; but 
 this was an accident scarce worthy of remark, 
 and alto2:ether too trival to mitio-ate the 
 novel charm of the situation. Miss Brooke, 
 fagged by more than a hundred monotonous 
 miles of jolting and jerking along the Great 
 Eastern line, was both hungry and thirsty, 
 and sat down to her simple meal with un- 
 affected relish. For her it was merely a ques- 
 tion of physical sustenance ; for our hero it 
 was an affair of genuine emotional moment. 
 Thus, whilst the too susceptible Werther 
 struggled with his feelings, the more philo- 
 sonhic Charlotte, 
 
 " Like a well-conducted person, 
 Went on cutting bread-and-butter." 
 
 " And now/' said Miss Brooke, when the 
 little tete-a-tete repast was fairly ended, 
 *' about getting to Draycott Manor V
 
 AFTER TEA. 43 
 
 Dick aroused himself with a sigh. He 
 fain would have prolonged this tea party a 
 deux for an indefinite period. As the old 
 Norsemen dreamt of a celestial alehouse, 
 wherein the cup and merry jest went round 
 for all eternity, so visions of a like material- 
 istic elysium — a sort of temperance Valhalla 
 — were rife within his brain, and before him 
 rose the possibility of some blissful antithesis 
 to that unfortunate " party in a parlour," 
 ■described in Peter Bell : 
 
 " Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, 
 Some sipping milk, some sipping tea, 
 But, as you by their faces see, 
 All silent— and all damn'd !" 
 
 Miss Brooke's query, however, recalled him 
 
 from these ill-regulated speculations on a 
 
 future existence, bringing him face to face 
 
 with mundane matters - of - fact. Valhalla 
 
 visions, and his idle, hypothetical fancy anent 
 
 " that damn'd party in a parlour" (as poor 
 
 Lamb once quoted it), were reluctantly let
 
 44 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 go, and he prepared to apply himself to the 
 exigencies of the moment. 
 
 " About getting to the Manor, Miss- 
 Brooke ? Yes, I'll be off after a trap directly 
 — I'll go at once. Only," continued Dick, in 
 a hesitating tone, " if you wouldn't mind 
 being left alone a little while — just for ten 
 minutes or so. Miss Brooke — I think I could 
 find a better turn-out at the livery stables 
 across the market than I could here. They 
 know me there ; the governor does business 
 with them, in fact ; and so, you see " 
 
 " Yes, yes, I see. Go by all means, and 
 I'll wait here until you return. I'm not at 
 all nervous, thank you — not in the least. Be- 
 sides, you won't be too long away, will you ?" 
 
 Dick earnestly assured Miss Brooke that 
 he would be back in a jif— in next to no 
 time ; and, having received a gracious nod of 
 adieu, he hastened forth on his errand. Just 
 as he emerged from the hotel, two gentlemen
 
 AFTER TEA. 45 
 
 entered it, the elder of whom he must in- 
 evitably have recognised had he only noticed 
 him in passing, for it was none other than his 
 mother's respected cousin, his own godfather, 
 Sydney Draycott. The person with him was 
 one of the many great musical authorities of 
 the musical city of Norwich, and the pair 
 were engrossed in a lively criticism on the 
 X30ncert they had that moment returned from 
 hearing. Arm-in-arm they passed into the 
 house, finally establishing themselves in the 
 little private parlour at the rear of the bar, 
 whence orders were shortly issued for sherry- 
 and-seltzer at once, and for Mr. Draycott 's 
 carriage in the course of half-an-hour. 
 
 Meanwhile, Miss Brooke was left to follow 
 her maiden meditations in undisturbed soli- 
 tude. These were not particularly active or 
 intent. At no time greatly given to taking- 
 thought for the morrow, she was now too 
 tired by travel to speculate with any degree
 
 46 JELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 of earnestness on the future tliat awaited her,, 
 and contented herself with the conclusion 
 that she had secured at least one partisan in 
 the household of her new employer — the 
 young gentleman, to wit, with whom she had 
 just been taking tea. Still building on her 
 erroneous impression of Dick's identity, she 
 breathed an inward hope that Draycott ^^ere 
 might prove as facile and susceptible a sub- 
 ject as was evidently Draj^cott Jils ; and the 
 train of ideas thus evoked carried her plea- 
 santly off into cloudland. 
 
 Ten minutes passed — fifteen — twenty. 
 Miss Brooke began to grow impatient (''Tire- 
 some boy ! Why in the world doesn't he 
 come back ?") Time still dragged slowly on, 
 and still no signs of our hero's approach were 
 apparent At length, ringing the bell, Miss 
 Brooke vvas answered by the suave head- 
 waiter in person. 
 
 "Do you know if Mr. Draycott has yet 
 come in ?"
 
 AFTER TEA. 47 
 
 '* Mr. Draycott, 'm ?" said the worthy, with 
 that " damDable iteration" which marks the 
 utterance of those attendant evils of society, 
 waiters. "Yes, 'm, Mr. Dray cot t come in 
 jest a Uttle while ago, 'm." 
 
 " Indeed ! Where is he now, then ?" 
 *' He's in the bar-parlour, 'm — leastways, he 
 were there not a minute since, 'm." 
 
 " Be so good, then, as to tell him I'm wait- 
 ing, and shall be glad to see him as soon as 
 possible." 
 
 " Cert'ny, 'm — I'll tell him directly. Any 
 name, m { 
 
 " Oh, that's not necessary ; he'll know at 
 once who it is wants him." 
 
 " Jest so, 'm," said the official, blandly. 
 "I'll tell him myself." And, whilst Miss 
 Brooke remained in the coffee-room, some- 
 what annoyed that our hero should have thus 
 prolonged his absence, the white-chokered 
 messenger made his way to the bar-parlour.
 
 48 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 where Sydney Draycott, Esq., " with watery 
 •eye and educated whisker/' was carefully wrap- 
 ping himself up preparatory to starting home. 
 
 " Lady waitin' to see you in the coffee- 
 room, sir." 
 
 ''Eh! what? See me f" 
 
 "Yes, sir. Arst for Mr. Draycott. Wish 
 to see you as soon as possible, sir." 
 
 "■ Dear, dear ! Very singular — very so ! 
 Do you know who — er — who she is, William ?" 
 
 " Well, no, sir ; can't say as I do know her 
 pusson'ly. Seem to be a stranger to these 
 parts, sir. Didn't give any name ; said as 
 you'd know at once who it were, sir." 
 
 " Yes, but I dont /" exclaimed Mr. Dray- 
 cott, in an aggrieved tone. '' Haven't the 
 slightest idea, not the — er— the — what is she 
 like, William "?" 
 
 " Tear to be quite the lady, sir — quite so." 
 
 "Tut, tut!" muttered Mr. Draycott, 
 glancing at himself in the glass, and softly
 
 AFTER TEA. 49 
 
 fondlino: his whisker. "Well — er — I'll be 
 there directly, William — be there directly." 
 
 Left, on the retirement of the waiter, once 
 more sole occupant of the coffee-room. Miss 
 Brooke drew on her jacket and gloves, and, 
 turning to the mirror, began adjusting her 
 hat on the massy coils of bright black hair so 
 artistically braided about her head. Ere she 
 had finished to her satisfaction, however, the 
 door softly opened, and her solitude was in- 
 vaded. By the reflection in the glass she 
 could see that it was not our hero, but a 
 stranger who had entered— a middle-aged 
 man, wrapped in a light grey overcoat, and 
 wearing a pair of close-fitting, delicately hued 
 gloves on his well-shaped hands. Thinking 
 it only polite to acknowledge his presence. 
 Miss Brooke made a half-turn in his direc- 
 tion, and was rewarded by an elaborate bow, 
 an ingratiating simper, on the part of the 
 new-comer. Somewhat astonished, the lady 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 addressed herself anew to the mirror, in whose 
 tell-tale depths the stranger's every move- 
 ment was distinctly observable. 
 
 (" Dieu me henisse ! what in the world is 
 the matter with the man ?" said Miss Brooke 
 to herself, as she saw the figure in the glass 
 fi.dgetiug nervously in her rear, with eyes 
 fixed expectantly on her person. " Perhaps, 
 by-the-bye, he, too, wants to arrange his 
 toilette.") 
 
 "Ahemr coughed the stranger, with a 
 peculiar and significant emphasis. 
 
 Miss Brooke turned, abruptly. 
 
 " A thousand pardons, madam ! but — er — 
 are you the lady who was inquiring for Mr. 
 Dravcott V 
 
 /' For Mr. Draycott ? Yes. I expect him 
 back again every minute." 
 
 " Expect him back again, madam ? That's 
 very odd, very — er — very singular !" 
 
 " Vous trouvezf said Miss Brooke, with a
 
 AFTER TEA. 51 
 
 cool shrug of the shoulder. " I can't see that 
 it's at all odd — at all singular ; and, excuse 
 me, but I really don't understand " 
 
 " One moment, my dear madam — one 
 moment ! /am Mr. Draycott." 
 
 ''Your repeated Miss Brooke, for the 
 instant taken aback. " Oh, well, there's 
 some mistake, evidently. You're not my Mr. 
 Draycott, at all events. My Mr. Draycott is 
 quite a young gentleman- — a son of Mr. 
 Sydney Draycott, of Draycott Man " 
 
 " Eh ! What ? Son of Impossible, 
 
 madam !" 
 
 " Sir !" 
 
 *' Impossible, madam ! Why, bless my 
 soul the — er — the boy's a mere child — an 
 infant, madam ! Tom f He can't be more 
 than — let's see — than — er — than eight or 
 nine years at the most." 
 
 " Mais si, mais si, m'sieu .'" said the 
 governess, the spirit of contradiction rising 
 
 4—2
 
 52 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 within her, and becoming, as was her wont, 
 more foreign in her phraseology as she 
 warmed with discussion, ** if he has not 
 already seen seventeen, he is certainly very 
 close to it." 
 
 " Heally, madam, you must excuse my 
 disagreeing with you. I — er — I ought to 
 know. I am his father." 
 
 " Yon his father?" faltered Miss Brooke. 
 " Then you're " 
 
 " Sydney Draycott, madam, of Draycott 
 Manor, at — er — at your service." 
 
 And Mr. Draycott, w^ho had lived much 
 in Paris, and who prided himself on the 
 nicety of his conduct toward what he was 
 wont to term " the sex," favoured the lady 
 with a second elaborate obeisance. 
 
 For once at least in her life Miss Brooke 
 was thoroughly disconcerted. A glimmering 
 of the true state of affairs flashed upon 
 her, and the blood rushed hotly to her face.
 
 AFTER TEA. 53 
 
 as she reflected in what a ridiculously false 
 position she found herself. There was ob- 
 viously, however, but one course to be taken, 
 the first step of which was boldly to declare 
 her identity. Without, therefore, pausing 
 to puzzle farther as to the precise relation 
 our hero actually bore to Mr. Draycott, she 
 proceeded to introduce herself forthwith. 
 
 " Mr. Draycott," began she, fixing him 
 with her magnificent eyes, "I'm afraid there's 
 been a very stupid mistake made on my 
 part — a mistake that demands both an ex- 
 planation and an apology." 
 
 "By no means, my dear madam — by no 
 means," answered the gentleman, affably, 
 hurrying blindly onward to the social pitfall 
 that lay in his path. " Any circumstance 
 that permits me the — qm — honour of your 
 society is, I venture to say, none other than 
 a happy accident — a happy accident." 
 
 " Mr. Draycott," said his companion, plung-
 
 54 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 ing resolutely in medias res, " I am Miss 
 Brooke." 
 
 But Sydney Draycott was a man whose 
 thoughts were so entirely, so invariably, en- 
 grossed by one subject, and that one subject 
 himself, that such a slight and irrelative 
 matter as the name of his children's new 
 governess had found no abiding place in 
 his memory. What response he would have 
 made to Miss Brooke's declaration it is im- 
 possible to say, for at that moment the door 
 opened, and in walked Dick Ehot. 
 
 Of the scene that ensued, of the questions 
 that were asked and answered, of the ex- 
 planations that were given and received, ere 
 a clear and perfect understanding was esta- 
 blished between the three persons, it is 
 needless to inflict an account on the intelli- 
 gent reader. That a general agreement was 
 eventually arrived at may be premised. 
 Dick's delayed appearance was due to the
 
 AFTER TEA. 55 
 
 inability of the livery stables to meet bis 
 wants in a sufficiently satisfactory manner — 
 wants wbich were now obviated by tbe pre- 
 sence of Mr. Draycott and his carriage at 
 the Hegent Hotel. 
 
 In comparative silence our trio made the 
 journey home, for the still-prevailing uproar 
 of the wind precluded anything like sus- 
 tained conversation. Each was occupied by 
 private reflections. Sydney Draycott medi- 
 tated on his own manifold excellencies 
 and accomplishments — (Charles Eliot once 
 quoted him as a man so rich in self-appreci- 
 ation that he enjoyed the monopoly of it) — 
 with an occasional condescending bye-thought 
 for the lady at his side. Miss Brooke mused 
 drowsily on the day's adventures, inwardly 
 bemoaning the absence of her " luggage and 
 things," only one small box being retained 
 in her possession, whilst the rest lay at 
 Norwich under orders for transmission to
 
 56 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 Hethercote, As for our hero, seated oppo- 
 site his two seniors in the dark carriage, he 
 chewed the cud of sweet and bitter fancy 
 with a silent and simple abandonment truly 
 calf-like ; and, when he took his leave at the 
 head of the little bye-road leading to The 
 Leas, it was with an air of abstraction be- 
 yond his years.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DICK S NEW IDOL. 
 
 HEEE was a certain lady, esteemed 
 and eulogised by Coiigreve, of 
 whom Steele magnificently said 
 " to have loved her was a liberal education." 
 This is as it may be (Moore has told us what 
 thev learn whose only books are woman's 
 looks), but it is a fact that ere our hero, Dick 
 Eliot, had loved Miss Lydia Brooke a bare 
 three months, his education (liitherto rather 
 backward) had made a marked progress. 
 And when we speak of his education, we use 
 the word in its widest and most catholic 
 sense. The incipient Max, the human being,
 
 58 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 the creature of ideas and passions, had men- 
 tally and physically advanced, ripened, de- 
 veloped. Not all the conventional instruction 
 he had undergone aforetime so opened his 
 mind, so expanded his spirit, as did his 
 casual intercourse with Miss Brooke. That 
 young Juan learnt more from Donna Julia 
 than ever he acquired from his lady-mother. 
 Donna Inez, and the like proper "authori- 
 ties," is a presumption no person of experi- 
 ence would call into question. 
 
 And, after all, it was not actually Lydia 
 Brooke that our hero fell in love with, but 
 rather with his conception of Lydia Brooke — 
 a decidedly different personage ; no mere 
 daughter of Eve, but a flawless divinity 
 evolved from the glowing depths of his inner 
 consciousness. At Dick's age one idealises 
 everything, and the warm, rose-coloured hues 
 of fancy glorify much that is otherwise in- 
 glorious. There is a period in youth when
 
 DICK'S NEW IDOL. 59 
 
 one awakes as if from sleep — the heedless 
 sleep of childhood ; but, during the slumber, 
 our eyelids have been touched with the juice 
 of love-in-idleness, and, lo ! the first creature 
 our filmy gaze falls upon, straightway capti- 
 vates our heart. Failing other object, we 
 even turn our young affections on our- 
 selves, becoming. Narcissus-like, the victims 
 of a misplaced attachment. This, however, 
 is the error of lads rather than of lasses. 
 The softer sex is befooled less selfishly, 
 though not less egregiously, throwing away 
 its youth and beauty on things all ugly and 
 unworthy, as Titania with Nick Bottom, or 
 the chaste Diana with the archgoat Pan. 
 What matter ass's head or cloven hoof? If 
 rogues and simpletons cease to find favour 
 with women, it would be but a smileless 
 world for mankind at large. 
 
 Dick Eliot, then, endowed his godfather's 
 governess with all the graces and all the
 
 60 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 virtues, and thereon became enamoured of 
 the perfection he had himself conceived. The 
 story of the Cyprian sculptor, bewitched by 
 an image of his own creation, is one of deep 
 significance, of every-day illustration ; and 
 surely no Pygmalion was ever more infatu- 
 ated than our unsophisticated hero. That 
 he never told his love is a matter of course — 
 (ingenuous youth forbid I) — but, equally as a 
 matter of course, its existence was apparent 
 to the object of adoration from the very 
 outset. The lady, however, had all the ad- 
 vantages of age, sex, and experience ; and 
 hence, that which was a serious malady for 
 the boy was but a passing amusement for 
 the woman. 
 
 Three months had elapsed since Miss 
 Brooke's introduction to our hero, and it was 
 now mid-winter. Christmas had come and 
 gone ; the old year was dead and buried in 
 snow, and the icv breath of its successor was
 
 DICK'S NEW IDOL. 61 
 
 borne bleakly over the white silences of the 
 fields, and through the bare, leaf-lorn woods 
 and skeleton hedges. From the neighbour- 
 ing ocean, with its hungry hollows and gaunt 
 monotony of wrestling waters, a melancholy 
 sound swept landward — a sound whose deep- 
 mouthed passion and pathos might seem to 
 speak the woes of some unsceptred Saturn, 
 the wrath and heart-break of a god ! 
 
 It was the breakfast hour at The Leas. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Eliot were seated at the table ; 
 Dick was kneeling on the hearthrug, warming 
 a boot at the fire before putting it on ; and 
 these were the words his father spake : 
 
 "Darwin said in his haste that all men 
 were monkeys ; and, 'pon my soul, Mrs. 
 Eliot ! the irrational, widespread habit of 
 mimicry abroad in society gives a colour to 
 the theory of our ape-origin that by no 
 means encourages ancestral pride. Now, 
 why I should do a thing merely because my
 
 ELIOT TEE YOUNGEE. 
 
 neighbour does it, is more than I can under- 
 stand. He likes county dinners, perhaps ; 
 he " 
 
 " My dear, he's not going." 
 
 " Who's not going ?" 
 
 " Cousin Sydney is not." 
 
 " And pray, madam, did I speak of cousin 
 Sydney ?" 
 
 " You spoke of your neighbour, Charles, 
 and you know perfectly well we have none 
 other near us — none, that is to say, whom 
 we recognise." 
 
 " Really, Alicia, you're the most provok- 
 ingly literal-minded woman I think I've ever 
 met ! When you are told to love your 
 neighbour as yourself, do you suppose it 
 limits your affections to persons living next 
 door, or to people withiu easy visiting dis- 
 tance ? I was referring to the world in 
 general." 
 
 The world in general, however, was too big
 
 DICK'S NE W ID OL. 63 
 
 a subject to come within the contracted 
 sphere of Mrs. Eliot's consideration, which 
 rarely troubled itself about anything beyond 
 its immediate surroundings. Geographically 
 speaking, her sympathies were bounded on 
 the north by the Wyatts, of Beechley, on the 
 south by the Gurneys and Pitts, of Brook- 
 ham, on the east by the Ariels, of Waste 
 Court, and on the west by the Dales, of 
 Little Upton. As her husband not unreason- 
 ably complained, she ivas a literal-minded 
 woman — a handsome, healthy, unpoetic, per- 
 fectly well-bred British matron, doing her 
 duty as wife and mother with all dignity and 
 decorum, and in every way conducting herself 
 as an edifying member of (county) society. 
 As Alicia Darby she had been the acknow- 
 ledged belle of the district, and young 
 Charley Eliot, smitten by her fine face and 
 figure, had impulsively placed at her feet his 
 heart and fortune, both of which, with her
 
 64 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 parents' approval, she had accepted. The 
 naturally sweet temper of the man, and the 
 aristocratic equanimity of the woman, made 
 their married life far smoother than might 
 have been expected from the union of such 
 diverse natures. An occasional impatient 
 tug and twisting of the moustache at his 
 wife's dead level of conventionality, and her 
 utter absence of sympathy for anything out 
 of the beaten track of ideas, was the only sign 
 that ever escaped Charles Eliot, although 
 the tinge of sarcasm colouring his conversa- 
 tion was doubtless an unconscious protest 
 against the intellectual narrowness of the fair 
 fellow-creature he had vowed to love, honour, 
 and cherish. 
 
 " I suppose I must go," resumed Mr. Eliot, 
 alter a pause, " although I did make a resolu- 
 tion to keep clear of those Hall dinners for 
 the future." 
 
 " There are certain duties which we owe to
 
 DICK'S NEW IDOL. 65 
 
 society, Charles, as I believe I have more 
 than once remarked." 
 
 "I believe so too, Alicia," answered the 
 gentleman, suppressing a yawn ; " in fact, I 
 distinctly remember your saying the same 
 thing before. But what do you think of my 
 idea of bringing in a bill for taking the duties 
 off society ? It's a notion I've had by me a 
 long while, and I fully intend suggesting it 
 to this man, Dale, w^e are to meet to-night. 
 If he's to be our new county member, as I'm 
 told, it'll interest him." 
 
 ''I do hope, Charles, you will do your 
 utmost to make a favourable impression on 
 Mr. Dale, and not say anything so glaringly 
 unworthy of your position. I greatly wish 
 that his first visit among us may be an agree- 
 able one." 
 
 " Well, I wish it may, my dear ; but I 
 confess I have my misgivings. You see," 
 continued Mr. Eliot, with a charming show of 
 
 vol,. I. 5
 
 66 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 candour, " take us all in all, we are not an 
 agreeable lot ; and I fear that this young 
 Dale, who's seen so much of foreign life, will 
 find us just a trifle heavy on hand. We are 
 decent enough folk in our way, no doubt ; 
 but then, what a way we have ! Poor young 
 fellow ! I'm really and sincerely sorry for 
 him." 
 
 Mrs. Eliot expressed an opinion that her 
 husband's sorrow was most uncalled-for, most 
 unwarranted. Mr. Oscar Dale might have 
 mingled in Continental society ; indeed, she 
 had been given to understand that this was 
 the case ; but she had yet to learn that 
 England, that an English county, was defi- 
 cient in any of those higher social virtues 
 and refinements which distinguish the better 
 classes. They might not be able to entertain 
 Mr. Dale with the light-minded converse of a 
 Parisian salon, or to introduce him to the 
 somewhat mixed assembly to be met with at
 
 DICE'S NEW IDOL. 67 
 
 Kome and Florence ; but, on the other 
 hand 
 
 On the other hand, Mrs. Ehot was calmly 
 confident that, for perfection of grace and 
 culture, for general excellence, moral and 
 intellectual, ''a little lower than the angels," 
 the society of her native county was a thing 
 apart. This declaration of faith was listened 
 to by Mr. Eliot with a patience quite pathetic 
 in its dumbness ; but, when it was fairly 
 finished, he lost no time in escaping the 
 subject. 
 
 " Not a flake of snow to-day, Dick," said 
 he, furtively loading his latest pet meer- 
 schaum, as he turned toward the window. 
 *' I think you may promise yourself a fair 
 time of it at the Hall, if only the ice has 
 been kept decently swept. You start almost 
 directly, I suppose ? How do you intend 
 getting there, by-the-bye ?" 
 
 " King Cole, in the sledge," answered Dick, 
 
 5—2
 
 68 ELIOT THE YOUI^GEB. 
 
 still attendino- to his boots, " with Atalanta 
 just put on as a leader." 
 
 " Oh ! indeed ; that'll look something like 
 tandem, won't it ?" 
 
 " Why, my dear Charles, it ivill be tandem/* 
 interposed Mrs. Eliot. " And what you want, 
 Dick, to drive in such state for I really can- 
 not conceive !" 
 
 " Promised to call at the Manor," explained 
 Dick shortly. 
 
 " At the Manor I Is cousin Sydney going 
 after all, then ?" 
 
 " No ; Dora and Tom." 
 
 " Oh, that's the arrangement, is it ? Well, 
 I must say, Dick, you are most kind, most 
 attentive, to those children nowadays. And 
 you used not to care for them one bit, I 
 remember. I'm sure both they and their 
 papa ought to be exceedingly obliged to you. 
 Only take care how you drive, there's a good 
 boy."
 
 DICK'S NEW IDOL. 6J 
 
 '' All right, I'll be careful." And with a 
 somewhat heightened colour (the effect, pos- 
 sibly, of pulling on his boots), Dick gathered 
 up skates, gimlet, and flask, and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 " Dear child ! he has an excellent heart," 
 murmured Mrs. Eliot, as the door closed on 
 her son. " Don't you think so yourself, 
 Charles T 
 
 " Well, 1 scarcely know." 
 
 " Scarcely know '? my dear /" 
 " I mean, I fancy he may have lost it." 
 " Keally, Charles, how very absurd !" 
 " Very. Just my own view of the matter. 
 Boys will be boys, however." 
 
 "You surely are not in earnest?" 
 Still tending his pipe at the window, Mr. 
 Eliot sav/ the sledge and its driver pass down 
 the carriage-way to the high road beyond. 
 The lad's face, as he waved his whip in adieu 
 to his father, was bright and eager-eyed ; and
 
 70 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 the rhythmical tumult of the sledge-bells 
 lingered in the clear morning air like the 
 sound of song and laughter. Some fleeting 
 memory of his own glad youth may have 
 floated up from that twilight land of ghosts 
 and echoes which we call the Past, for it was 
 with a sigh that Mr. Eliot turned to answer 
 his wife's reiterated query : 
 
 " You surely are not in earnest, 
 Charles ?" • 
 
 " No, my dear ; on second thoughts I don't 
 think I am. Our lad is but a lad, after all. 
 I dare say he has dreams and fancies that 
 neither you nor I can quite fathom, and we 
 mustn't be unwisely wise. At what time will 
 you be ready to start for the Hall — six, 
 seven ? When ?" 
 
 Whether Mrs. Eliot would have suffered 
 the matter to slip by thus elusively, without 
 further explanation, is doubtful ; but at this 
 moment her attention was called away by
 
 DICK'S NEW IDOL. 
 
 71 
 
 the arrival of the morning mail (per Hether- 
 cote postman), in discussing which her mater- 
 nal spirit of inquiry was, for the time, set 
 aside.
 
 ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AT THE HALL. 
 
 HEN the Dales of Little Upton 
 confirmed the rumour that their 
 connection, Oscar Dale, the in- 
 heritor of his uncle's estate of Idlewild, was 
 actually coming from a,broad to settle in the 
 county, a good deal of local interest and 
 excitement was evinced, and his relations rose 
 perceptibly in the social scale. A large landed 
 proprietor, young, wealthy (" and, I'm told, 
 good - looking, my dear," whispered one 
 spinster to another, "■ and has been rather 
 wild, papa says "), it is not astonishing that 
 the prospect of such an acquisition to the
 
 AT THE HALL. 73 
 
 neighbourhood should have been regarded 
 with emotion. The breast feminine was 
 animated with a dehghtful glow of expecta- 
 tion, and more than one enterprising virgin, 
 who haply had passed her 'premiere jeunesse, 
 was fain to be renewing her youth like the 
 eagle at the bare tidings of the prodigal's 
 return. 
 
 Nor was the agitation simply social. The 
 Norfolk and Norwich Conservative Club 
 called a meeting of its members, at which it 
 was solemnly debated whether Oscar Dale, 
 Esq., would not be a fit and proper person to 
 represent the county in the Commons House 
 of Parliament, and whether he should not 
 be formally invited to appear as a candidate 
 at the forthcoming election. With this end 
 in view was organised that assembly at the 
 seat of the Muffle Drummonds, of which 
 mention has been made in our preceding 
 chapter. A grand dinner was to be given
 
 74 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 by old Sir Hugo, the retiring M.P., and 
 the more influential of the Conservative 
 gentry v^'^ere bidden to the feast to meet the 
 man proposed as their future representa- 
 tive. 
 
 That these deep-laid political plottings 
 might be rendered less palpable to the prying 
 eyes of the opposing faction, a semblance 
 of a mere social or convivial character was 
 lent to the gathering by including in the 
 invitations the wives and daughters of the 
 gentlemen partisans aforesaid, and further- 
 more, by preluding the banquet itself with a 
 skating party of young men and maidens on 
 the lake that fronted the Hall. 
 
 '' Artful, artful, my lady — ve-ry artful !" 
 chuckled old Sir Hugo, with a feeble relish 
 of the strategy. "And — and historical. So, 
 in like way, you know, might the Komans — 
 the, the, the ancient Komans — have disguised 
 their plans at the festival given to the — the
 
 AT THE HALL. 75- 
 
 — yes, yes ! — to the Sabines — the — the rape 
 of the Sab " 
 
 " Sir Hugo !" 
 
 " My love ?" 
 
 " The girls !" 
 
 "Yes, my love." 
 
 And the old man meekly subsided into 
 silence, pulled up as he v\^as pulled up a 
 dozen times a day, on the verge of commit- 
 ting himself by the recital of some chance 
 phrase or anecdote calculated (according to 
 his wife's ideas of propriety) to contaminate 
 the maiden minds of those somewhat elderly 
 young ladies, his daughters. 
 
 Of course, our hero was of the skating 
 party, and, in his position as only son, he had 
 farther been honoured with an invitation to 
 the subsequent dinner, whereat his parents 
 were also engaged to appear. The latter dis- 
 tinction he would willingly have dispensed 
 with, but Mrs. Eliot would not suffer him to
 
 ULIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 decline the greatness that had been thrust 
 upon him. 
 
 Apart from the embarrrassment of wearing 
 a, costume void of available pockets — those 
 harbours of refuge for the hands of hobble-de- 
 hoyhood — there was the painful difficulty of 
 finding food for conversation with the lady 
 allotted him at table. 
 
 " I hope Richard has made himself agree- 
 able to you, Miss Smiley, during dinner," was 
 (as Dick well knew) the inevitable remark of 
 his inconsiderate mother to his fair neicrhbour 
 at the first lull in talk at the latter end of 
 the meal ; whereupon all eyes would be 
 turned in the direction of the conscious, 
 tongue-tied Kichard, and all ears would await 
 the answer of the lady thus addressed. 
 
 Of these impending trials, however, Dick 
 thought little as he drove toward Draycott 
 Manor. His head was full of other thoughts, 
 -and his vision travelled idly over the winter
 
 AT THE HALL. IT 
 
 landscape, spread out, wan and wide, for miles 
 before him. A j)ale, pearl- grey, empty sky 
 above ; a world of white, strangely soft and 
 dumb, stretching around as far as eye could 
 reach ; a clear, crisp atmosphere ; and, 
 despite the cold, a certain sense of calm and 
 comfort throughout the silent, snow-muffled 
 land. 
 
 Now and then a rabbit, hopping lightly 
 over the brittle twigs and curled up corpses 
 of last year's leaves, would steal forth from 
 the ghostly woodlands, and make its way 
 across the mute waste of the wintry fields ; 
 or a blackbird, flitting from out the low-lying 
 coppice, would bring down a handful of loose 
 snow with the flutter of its wings. A dream- 
 world of deadened sounds and softened out- 
 lines had come in place of the many-voiced, 
 many-coloured earth of heretofore, and a 
 peaceful vagueness and pui-ity lulled the 
 white slumber season of the young year.
 
 78 ELIOT THE YO UNGER. 
 
 It was about eleven o'clock when Dick 
 Eliot came in view of the Manor, and his 
 young friends, Dora and Tom Draycott, were 
 already awaiting him at the head of the 
 avenue. A third person was also standing 
 there in the snow, a person whose bright 
 Shetland shawl and liberal display of warm- 
 hued petticoat made quite a vivid patch of 
 colour on the white background. Perhaps 
 the artistic soul within him caught fire at 
 the sight, but anyhow there came a fine 
 responsive glow into our hero's cheek on be- 
 holding this scarlet-skirted figure at the gate- 
 way — a glow that deepened to a positive 
 blush as he stopped the sledge and lifted his 
 hat in salutation. 
 
 "■ Hooray ! we're going to ' go tandem," 
 sang out young Tom to his sister. " I say 
 Dolly ! you and Miss Brooke '11 sit behind, you 
 know, and I'll ride in front with Dick." 
 
 " That you won't, so there now !" cried
 
 AT THE HALL. 79 
 
 Doi-a promptly. " I shall ride in frout with 
 Dick mvself." 
 
 " I think it would be much better and 
 safer if you both went behind," said Miss 
 Brooke, calmly. *' What do you think, Mr. 
 
 Eliot r 
 
 " Certainly — by all means — I think so too," 
 answered Dick ; and the children were fain 
 to be content with the position in the rear, 
 whilst Miss Brooke coolly went to the fore, oc- 
 <;upying the place of honour beside the driver. 
 
 A light singing of the whip as it cut 
 through the thin frosty air, a sudden 
 scrambling of hoofs, a scattering of snow, and 
 the sledge was scudding swiftly forward 
 between the white fences and fields that 
 skirted the road to Hethercote Hall. A very 
 gay and gallant show they made in the eyes 
 of cottage children, as they sped by with 
 their jingling bells and passing flash of colour; 
 and more than one hungry ploughboy, swing-
 
 80 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 ing his hob-nailed heels from the top bar of 
 gate or stile, paused, with a slice of frost- 
 bitten turnip bulging from his mouth, to gaze 
 after the " gentlefolk i' the sley." 
 
 The distance from the Manor to the Hall 
 was but short — too short, Dick decided — and 
 they were soon gliding through the snowy 
 park toward the big stone-grey house itself, 
 the clear, keen, ringing music of skates on 
 the ice, and the joyous voices of the skaters, 
 reaching them some while ere they actually 
 came within sio;ht of the lake. In the 
 shelter of the great central porch, over 
 which were emblazoned in stone the arms of 
 the Muffle Drummonds — a hound dormant, 
 with the old Norman motto. Gave cm Chien t 
 (" Beware of the dog!") in scroll beneath — 
 Dick saw assembled a small group, consisting 
 of Sir Hugo, his wife, a couple of daughters, 
 a minor, canon from Norwich, and one or 
 two ladies and gentlemen unknown.
 
 AT THE HALL. 81 
 
 " Ay, ay ! who's this, who's this ?" babbled 
 old Sir Hugo, blinking at the approaching 
 sledge-party. " Whom have we here, my 
 lady, whom have we here ?" 
 
 Lady Drummond's gold-rimmed eye-glasses 
 were slowly raised and set a-straddle across 
 her high-ridged Roman nose, the better to 
 scrutinise the new arrivals. 
 
 " Young Eliot and two of the ye-es, 
 
 two of the Draycott children. The person 
 with them is, I imagine, the governess." 
 
 "Nice children, nice children," quoth the 
 loose-tongued old baronet, raising a pinch of 
 snuff to his nostrils, with trembling fingers ; 
 " and, and a fine young woman, egad ! The 
 governess, eh ? Well, well, well ! 
 
 " ' Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought, 
 To teach the — the — the young idea how to shoot.' 
 
 Teach 'em how to skate to day, eh, Boddy- 
 man { 
 
 And, with a thin, ghost-like chuckle work- 
 
 VOT^. I. 6
 
 82 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 ing aud rattling in his scrannel windpipe, 
 and puckering up his wizened features, Sir 
 Hugo turned to the Eector of Heathercote, 
 whose portly person had just emerged from 
 the house.   
 
 Greetings being exchanged between our 
 hero's party and his host's, and the sledge 
 and horses being sent off to the stables, the 
 whole company made a move toward the lake, 
 where some score or so skaters were darting 
 to and fro, and wheeling round each other 
 with that pre-occupied persistence of motion 
 in which midges are wont to spend their May 
 evenings. 
 
 Dick Eliot lost little time in joining 
 the throng, and Miss Brooke (for whom 
 were destined the second pair of skates 
 brought from The Leas) was induced, after 
 some slight hesitation, to follow suit. 
 
 In reality, the lady was a fearless and skil- 
 ful skater, having had considerable practice
 
 AT THE HALL. 83 
 
 on foreign waters, and being a perfect mistress 
 of the bold curves, sweeping circles, and free- 
 footed enterprise of the " outside edge." In 
 character of instructress to her young pupils 
 she was enabled to take to the ice without 
 violating the fitness of things in the aristo- 
 cratic eyes of Lady Muffle Drummond, who 
 held that persons in Miss Brooke's position 
 should always be made to know and maintain 
 their " place " — that they should consider 
 themselves, and be considered, as mere 
 dwellers on the threshold, and by no means 
 admissible to the select arcana, the holy of 
 holies, wherein their betters live, and move, 
 and have their being. 
 
 " Hi ! here ! I say you, Eliot !" shouted a 
 black-browed, bull-necked young fellow, fol- 
 lowing in the wake of our hero. " Want to 
 speak to you a moment. How are ye ? All 
 right — he}^ ? Who's that woman over yonder 
 — dark woman — the one that's just put off 
 
 6—2
 
 84 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 her shawl there ? Who is she, hey ? Reg'lar 
 teazer, and no mistake !" 
 
 The speaker, who had the air and address 
 of an under-keeper, with a suggestion of the 
 stables, was Ulric Muffle Drummond, second 
 son of Sir Hugo, and erewhile a schoolmate of 
 Dick Eliot. 
 
 A thick-set, heavy-jowled, animal-looking 
 young man, with a dull red complexion, 
 cloudy, unresponsive eyes, and a suggestion 
 of brute force, of brute passion, in the coarse 
 mouth and square-cut chin. A young man 
 with a fist that could fell an ox, and M'ith a 
 general appearance that made one fancy 
 knocking down bullocks, and such like 
 butchery, to be his most fitting vocation. A 
 Briton of the Ancient Order of Britons, 
 insular and uncultured, terrible in his wrath, 
 with a courage, obstinacy, and endurance 
 absolutely unquenchable ; a being in whose 
 society the intelligent foreigner instinctively 
 
 I
 
 AT TEE HALL. 85 
 
 feels ill at ease, regarding him with nervous 
 dislike and distrust, even as he regards the 
 surly-souled bull-dog, that shows its formidable 
 teeth, and stiffens its sinews in sniffing at his 
 Continental calves. 
 
 *' Morning, Drummond," said Dick with a 
 nod. " What is it ? Who do you want to 
 know about ?" 
 
 " Topper over yonder," answered the young 
 gentleman, sententiously. " Dark woman, 
 red petticoat, gipsy-looking, and that sort of 
 thing." 
 
 " You mean Miss Boddyman, I suppose ?" 
 said our hero, without looking round. 
 
 " No ; I'll be shot if I do ! None o' your 
 district visitors for me ! Not my sort, old 
 cock ! I mean the woman that came in your 
 sledge. Now you know. Who is she, 
 hey r 
 
 Dick turned at this, and the two young 
 men faced each other.
 
 86 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 " That came in my sledge V 
 " Aye ; that came in your sledge." 
 A pause. Dick makes a cat with his stick 
 at a fragment of frozen snow. His companion 
 gazes steadily away to where Miss Brooke is 
 wheeling and hovering, hawk-wise, about her 
 pupils. The hesitation on our hero's part is 
 only momentary, but both he and his inter- 
 locutor are curiously alive to it. 
 
 '' Oh— ah ! That's Miss Whats-her-name," 
 answers Dick, somewhat abruptly. " The — a 
 — the governess." 
 
 *' Whose governess, hey ? Yours?" 
 " No ; the Draycotts'." 
 " Thankee. Think I'll go and speak to 
 'em. Do the honours, and that sort o' 
 thing. See you again, old cock, by-and-by." 
 And with this, the speaker struck off 
 toward the head of the lake, leaving his 
 guest to follow or not, as he might feel 
 inclined.
 
 AT THE MALL. 87 
 
 " What a cad that fellow is !" muttered 
 Dick to himself, in atone of strong conviction. 
 ^* I always did dislike him at school, and, by 
 Jove ! he don't seem to have improved much 
 since. Bowing and scraping there ! He'll be 
 down directly ; and serve the beggar deuced 
 well right, too !"
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 "a pretty piece of business." 
 
 N this queer comedy of errors which 
 we call life — and which has the 
 Devil for prompter and Death as 
 scene- shifter — one of the queerest episodes is 
 surely that wherein Young Love pours forth 
 its treasure — pure, honest, ardent, all-con- 
 fiding, all-believing afiection — at the feet of 
 an utterly unworthy and unappreciative idol ! 
 The heathen, in his blindness, says the Rev. 
 Bishop Heber, bows down to wood and 
 stone ; and people who have travelled assure 
 us that such is indeed the case. This, of 
 wurse, is very deplorable ; but when we see
 
 "A PRETTY PIECE OF BUSINESS." 89- 
 
 the enlightened Christian going through 
 a similar short-sighted ceremony, what, as 
 fellow-Christians, must be our feelings ? 
 
 In Lydia Brooke, as we have already inti- 
 mated, Dick Eliot beheld a divinity. Scoff 
 not, ye breakers of images, at the poor 
 child's infatuation, but rather recall the time 
 when such ignorance was bliss, such credulity 
 an intoxicating delight ! Faith is always 
 beautiful — with a beauty independent of its 
 object — and if your days of delusion, reader, 
 are gone by, and you wander amid empty 
 years, seeing drearily through the grass and 
 the flowers the skeletons that whiten in 
 the earth beneath, you needs must own 
 that you have lost more than you have 
 gained. Better, surely, to look upon the 
 world as a garden than as a burial-ground. 
 Better youth's blindfold worship — aye, youth's 
 animalism, even ! than the pulseless ma- 
 terialism of manhood.
 
 90 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 Our hero was a poet. As yet, indeed, 
 undeveloped, and with but feeble stirrings 
 ■of the God-gift within him ; but, neverthe- 
 less, a poet. The pathetic splendours of set- 
 ting suns, the tender witchery of moonrise, 
 the shifting glory of sea and sky, and all 
 the illimitable loveliness of mountain and 
 meadow and woodland — these for him were 
 not merely as they are for the mass, things 
 dumb and soul-less. He kept them in his 
 heart, as Mary kept the sayings of the child 
 Jesus, treasuring them up for the future to 
 interpret. Tennyson tells how the music of 
 the spheres sleeps in the plain brown eggs 
 of the nightingale : and so poetry (living, 
 though undelivered,) slumbered within the 
 quickening brain of our hero. 
 
 The winter morning was sharpening into 
 the winter afternoon, when the skating party 
 at the Hall began to break up. The last 
 ■cold gleam of sunlight had faded from the
 
 ''A PRETTY PIECE OF business:' 91 
 
 stone-fronted mansion of the Muffle Drum- 
 monds, leaving it with a stern set grey face, 
 as of something suddenly caught and chilled 
 in death. Ghostlier grew the snowy park, 
 the leafless woods, the leaden sky. A few 
 enthusiasts lingered yet on the lake, flitting, 
 bat-like, over its pallid surface, or circling 
 beneath the shadow-breeding pines that 
 skirted its farther shore. Of these were 
 Dick Eliot and Miss Brooke. Young Drum- 
 mond was also among the half-dozen or so 
 remaining skaters, but our hero had con- 
 trived to baffle his attendance on the 
 governess, by luring her away with a pro- 
 mise of virgin ice. 
 
 By threading a certain nari'ow outlet be- 
 tween the pines, one came to a small, round, 
 reed-bordered pond, whose connection with 
 the main body of water had hitherto been 
 overlooked or ignored by all eyes save those 
 of our inquiring hero. To this retreat he
 
 92 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 had tempted Miss Brooke for a final ten 
 minutes' of her favourite exercise ; and se- 
 ductive, indeed, for the true votary of skating 
 was the clear, black, flawless expanse of ice 
 which it afforded. 
 
 Dick's heart thrilled with a strange in- 
 tensity as he found himself alone in the 
 society of the woman whom his soul revered, 
 the goddess of his dreams and aspirations. 
 Alone ! The spot was as still and solitary 
 as the midday desert. Round it brooded 
 the solemn Norwegian pines, with not a 
 breath of wind to stir their snow-laden 
 branches ; whilst an inner belt of frozen 
 reeds stood stiff and. stark beneath the 
 shadow of their over-reaching arms. A 
 spectral twilight possessed the place ; a weird 
 sense of secrecy ; a certain conscious and 
 expectant silence, as though wood and water 
 were dumbly waiting their deliverance from 
 some mysterious spell of old ages.
 
 *'A PRETTY PIECE OF BUSINESS." 93 
 
 " Heavens !" exclaimed Miss Brooke, with 
 an involuntary shiver. "What a sepulchre 
 of a place you've brought me to ! But, then, 
 what ice !" 
 
 And, with an easy mastery of motion, she 
 struck out across the glassy surface, which 
 gave back a hollow, complaining echo to the 
 sharp-bladed steel. Dick followed her move- 
 ments with all his eyes ; a tender tumult 
 in his breast : a chaotic vision of sweet possi- 
 bilities bewildering his brain. Both the lady 
 and the gentleman were, for the time, 
 wholly pre-occupied ; the former with a 
 purely physical and selfish enjoyment of her 
 own skill, the latter with thoughts far-flying 
 into the fairy regions of the ideal. Long, 
 long after, when change had come with the 
 changing years, and the fires of youth had 
 burnt themselves out, Dick Eliot recalled 
 the strange stillness of the time and place — 
 a stillness that, like his own, seem-ed aching
 
 94 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 for utterance — and the ghost of a dead 
 passion rose up in dreary mockery before him. 
 
 " One more turn, and then, helas ! I'm 
 finished." 
 
 Thus, Lydia Brooke, gliding by her com- 
 panion with a momentary fluttering of femi- 
 nine skirts, ere, the circle completed, she 
 gracefully subsides on the prow of an old 
 broken boat that, half embedded in the ice, 
 thrusts itself out from amid the frozen 
 reeds. 
 
 '' Come here, Mr. Eliot, please, and see if 
 you can't make yourself useful. Just help 
 me ofP with my skates, will you ?" 
 
 Dick crosses over to where she sits, and 
 kneels down before her. Miss Brooke puts 
 forward a pretty little foot, slightly lifting 
 her petticoat as she does so, and Dick mutely 
 takes it in his hand. 
 
 " Good gracious, child ; how you tremble ! 
 What's the matter ?"
 
 "A PRETTY FIE CE OF BUSINESS." 95 
 
 '' Oh, Miss Brooke, Miss Brooke!— Lydia I" 
 
 Here, however, something rises in his 
 throat and stops his utterance ; but the lad's 
 eyes are very eloquent as he lifts them from 
 the feet of his idol to her face — a face which 
 exercise has flushed with warm blood, and 
 which looks down not unkindly on its youth- 
 ful worshipper. 
 
 " You silly child !" says the governess, 
 glancing quickly round her ere she lays 
 her ungloved hand lightly on his shoulder. 
 "Why, what do you mean?" 
 
 What indeed ! The flood-gates of his 
 heart are opened now, and a pretty outrush 
 of passion succeeds. Somewhat indefinite 
 and unpractical, thinks the lady, but beyond 
 a doubt sincere, and quite capable of being 
 turned into pleasurable, if not into profitable 
 channels. She is not in the least touched 
 by the boyish words of love and faith he 
 pours forth ; she sees neither the humour
 
 «6 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 nor the pathos of his glowing promises and 
 plans for the future ; but she remembers his 
 position as an only son, and listens to him 
 with a tolerance that is very womanly. 
 Besides (physically speaking) she is no 
 languid, lukewarm nature, and a gentle re- 
 sponsive emotion tingles through her veins 
 as the hot lips of youth are pressed upon 
 her hand. 
 
 The pair make quite a picture — they and 
 the accessories — in the solemn dusk of the 
 wintry afternoon ; and their attitude is some- 
 what akin to that of the lady and gentleman 
 in Millais' " Romans leaving Britain ;" for by 
 this time Dick's head has dropped into Lydia 
 Brooke's lap, and his arms are thrown round 
 her waist. Bather a striking contrast, too, 
 the picture presents — this unstudied " Land- 
 scape, with Figures." Youth and beauty 
 and passion in the figures ; death and deso- 
 lation in the landscape. Nature is ever at
 
 " A PRETTY PIECE OF BUSINESS." 97 
 
 harmony with herself, but, ah ! the cruel 
 discords of Nature and human nature ! From 
 Nature, indeed, we may no more expect 
 sympathy than (to quote Mill) we may 
 expect common human morality. George 
 Eliot's poem, " How Lisa loved the King," 
 speaking of the girl's despair, tells how the 
 changing moon looked down upon her un- 
 changed woe, and in like spirit of irony or 
 indifference will weeping skies be stretched, 
 as funeral palls, above the heads of happy 
 bridal parties, or the keen merriment of 
 sunshine make a mock of breaking hearts. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OSCAR DALE. 
 
 HE call to dinner is as inexorable as 
 the call to death. At its summons 
 the ploughman takes his hand 
 from the plough, the student turns his back 
 on his books, the lover tears himself from the 
 arms of his mistress. Then does the artizan 
 throw down his tools, the poet his pen, the 
 painter his brush. Young men and maidens, 
 old men and children, alike give up their 
 dearest pleasures and pursuits to go to dinner. 
 The loom and the wheel may wait, the epic 
 and the love-letter, the words of counsel and 
 the whispers of affection — all these may wait,
 
 OSCAR DALE. 99 
 
 but dinner must not. Come then, reader, 
 with us to dinner ! 
 
 Two hours, perhaps, have elapsed since the 
 occurrence of the pleasing little episode de- 
 scribed at the close of our last chapter. Miss 
 Brooke and her pupils have been driven 
 home to Draycott Manor, but not by our 
 hero. Fain, indeed, would he have escorted 
 them, but the arrival of his parents has de- 
 tained him at the Hall, and the honour has 
 passed into the hireling hands of his father's 
 coachman. His head is in a whirl as he 
 dresses himself for dinner in the doleful suit 
 of sable which custom bids us wear on occa- 
 sions of rejoicing and festivity, and a happy- 
 iteration of the afternoon's events goes on in 
 his mind. Other mental process than this 
 sweet retrospection he is, for the time, in- 
 capable of; nor is it until he is fairly wedged 
 in at table that he begins to awaken to a 
 sense of his surroundings.
 
 100 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 A large party is assembled in the famous 
 old banquet-hall of the Muffle Drummonds. 
 Five-and-thirty or forty heads, perhaps, are 
 bowed over their soup as Dick glances around 
 him — heads old, middle-aged, and (less numer- 
 ously) young. Bald and shining heads of 
 county magnates (heads of families, in fact) ; 
 elaborately bedizened heads of county mao-- 
 nates' wives; and here and there the oiled 
 and curled locks and flower-decked tresses of 
 senior sons and daughters. The talk, for the 
 most part, is of the province, provincial ; by 
 no means the sparkling, light wine sort of 
 converse one gets in London, but a steady 
 flow of fine old crusted port, so to speak. For 
 the party is essentially conservative, and 
 loveth not the new-fangled. , 
 
 At Dick's right hand is Miss Boddyman 
 (Polly Boddyman), the Rector's daughter ; on 
 his left is little Mrs. Wyatt, of Beechley, 
 fair, foolish, and faded, '^ insipid as the
 
 OSCAR DALE. 101 
 
 Queen upon a card." Nearer the host, on 
 the same side, are the rector, our hero's 
 mother, and Sydney Draycott, who, it seems, 
 has been induced to " assist" at the banquet, 
 despite all prophecy to the contrary. Directly 
 opposite to them are seated Charles Eliot, 
 the eldest Miss Drummond, and the guest of 
 the evening, Oscar Dale — a fair, slight built, 
 rather listless-looking young man, who has 
 duly attached himself to the daughter of the 
 house. 
 
 " And so you like music, Mr. Dale ?" Dick 
 overhears Miss Drummond say to her com- 
 panion, with a ceremonious show of interest. 
 " And what kind, pray ? Is it opera you 
 prefer, or oratorio — the sacred or the pro- 
 fane r 
 
 ' ' Oh, profane, of course ! Never could sit 
 out an oratorio in my life. Aunt Dorothy 
 took me to, what's-its-name, in the Strand — 
 Exeter Hall — the only night I was in town
 
 102 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 last week, and we had that thing of Handel's 
 —'Corn in Egypt,' isn't it? Eh? Beg 
 pardon ; ' Israel in Egypt,' as you say. 
 Didn't like it ; so I cut at the half." 
 
 Cut at the half! Poor Miss Drummond 
 looks almost offended, and turns to her other 
 neighbour, Mr. Eliot, who (shrewdly suspect- 
 ing that Mr. Dale's Gothicism is but an 
 assumption) is inly amused at her discom- 
 fiture. Young Dale meanwhile absently 
 strokes the yellow wave of moustache that 
 sweeps down each side his small, womanly 
 . mouth and smooth-shaven chin, and seems 
 slightly bored. 
 
 " Ah, Boddyman !" suddenly exclaims Sir 
 Hugo, catching sight of the Eector. '' Glad 
 to see you so, so — so near us. By-the-way, I 
 don't think yo\i have yet been presented to — 
 to — to Mr. Dale, Mr. Oscar Dale ? A future 
 parishioner, Boddyman; a — a — a new mem- 
 ber of the flock."
 
 OSCAB BALE. 103 
 
 " An honorary member merely," says Mr. 
 Dale, adjusting his eyeglass as he acknow- 
 ledges the introduction. " You see I don't 
 attend church myself; retired from the 
 service, so to speak. But I send Simkins 
 (Simkins is my man), and thus go there by 
 what-do-you-call-iE ? — proxy. Aunt Dorothy 
 says I shall go to heaven in the same way. 
 That, however, is simply guesswork, as I tell 
 her. Must be, mustn't it ?" 
 
 The quiet, abstracted, meditative manner 
 in which all this is uttered, the obvious un- 
 consciousness of saying anything in any 
 degree unorthodox or objectionable, so far 
 influences the Rev. Boddyman, that the 
 frown of clerical protest gathering on his 
 brow falters half way, and finally lapses into 
 a feeble and embarrassed smile. An awk- 
 ward pause ensues, but one of the delin- 
 quent's relatives — Mrs. Allan Dale, of Little 
 Upton — comes hastily to the rescu e.
 
 104 ELIOT THE YOVBGEB. 
 
 " Oscar/' explains she, in a general sort of 
 way, and "with a nervous, apologetic glance 
 at her placid kinsman, " has lived a good 
 deal abroad of late years, and hence, you 
 conceive, his views are somewhat different 
 from those of us stay-at-homes. You know, 
 Mr. Draycott, how oddly people look at 
 certain things on the other side the 
 Channel ?" 
 
 " Precisely so, my dear madam, precisely 
 so. I — er — I recollect when I was at 
 Dieppe how they used to look at the bathers. 
 Through — er — through lorgnettes, you know 
 — positively through lorgnettes ! I remem- 
 ber, too, being in Paris . . ." And here 
 Sydney Draycott glides smoothly off into a 
 groove of personal reminiscence,, interesting, 
 probably, to himself, but not otherwise im- 
 portant, and in no way bearing on the point 
 in question. By the time he has finished, 
 the Kector has sufficiently recovered himself
 
 OSCAR DALE. 105 
 
 to attempt Oscar Dale afresh, and blandly 
 expresses his gratification at the acquisition 
 to be conferred on the parish of Hethercote 
 by his (Mr. Dale's) residence therein. 
 
 " Well, yes. They are trying to arrange 
 Idlewild for me. But ' they/ I mean 
 What's-his-name, the solicitor, and the other 
 fellow, his agent," adds Mr. Dale, becoming 
 dreamily explicit. 
 
 " Exactly," responds the rector, wholly 
 unable to identify the persons thus alluded 
 to, but feeling called • on for some show of 
 comprehension. 
 
 "I shouldn't, however, speak of my 
 settling here as an acquisition — not if I were 
 you, you know," continued Mr. Dale, 
 thoughtfully caressing his moustache. " Fact 
 is, I'm generally put down as one of the 
 other sort. I find that people speak of me 
 as a worldling, a backslider, outcast, son o' 
 Belial, and so forth ; but I don't remember
 
 1(^6 ELIOl TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 being called an acquifiition. Why they give 
 me such singular names, I can't say. 
 Manners and customs of the English, 
 perhaps ?" 
 
 " The bigoted and uncharitable," says the 
 poor E,ector solemnly, "are peculiar neither 
 to one people nor to one place. They are to 
 be met with on every side, alike in the cities 
 of men and — and elsewhere." 
 
 " Ah ! Travelled much ?" 
 
 This abrupt shifting of the subject seems 
 to be one of the many.unconventionalities of 
 Mr. Oscar Dale, and is accompanied by a 
 sudden lifting of his dark eyelash, and a 
 sudden keen outlook from his steel-blue eyes 
 that, for the moment, revolutionises the whole 
 external of the man, fairly staggering one by 
 the rebuff it gives to all one's preconceived 
 notions of the languor and quiescence of his 
 character. For in that brief glance are 
 revealed energy, shrewd observation, and a
 
 OSCAR DALE. 107 
 
 rare and searching penetration. It is as 
 startling as though some dreamy, opium- 
 drowsed Malay should suddenly wake np 
 from his torpor and flash forth his creese from 
 the black sheath that hid it, without word or 
 warning ; and the Kev, Boddyman is so dis- 
 concerted by the glimpse thus given him of 
 quaUties hitherto wholly unsuspected, that 
 the question addressed him has to be repeated 
 ere an answer is elicited. 
 
 *' Travelled much ?" says Mr. Dale, lapsing 
 once more into the lotus-eater's state of list- 
 lessness which appears wontedly to charac- 
 terise him. " Been much abroad ?" . 
 
 Truth compels the Ptector to admit that he 
 has never been beyond his native shores, 
 whereat the interest of his vis-a-vis obviously 
 dwindles and dies, and the look of resigned 
 boredom returns to his face. As for the 
 guests in his immediate vicinity, they have 
 listened to his utterances with — to speak
 
 108 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 figuratively — tingling ears. Never, surely, 
 did man speak in this wise ; or, at least, not 
 in their presence. How to take it, is the 
 query that secretly vexes the soul of each 
 individual ; for the social rank and fortune of 
 the owner of Idlewild render this a most 
 delicate problem ; nor is it until the tact of 
 that admirable woman, Mrs. Eliot of The 
 Leas (who always sees things so exactly in 
 their proper light), suggests a solution, that 
 the general mind is relieved of its perplexing 
 sense of doubt and responsibility. 
 
 " So delightfully eccentric," whispered Mrs. 
 Eliot to her neighbour ; and the key-note, 
 once struck, soon swells into an harmonious 
 chorus. Eccentric ! I thank thee for that 
 word. It covereth a multitude of sins. It 
 obviates every difficulty, and expresses 
 society's view of the matter to a nicety. 
 
 Quoth Madame de B , discussing the^os^- 
 
 Tiiortem prospects of a certain deceased
 
 OSCAB DALE. 109 
 
 grandee, " God thinks twice before he damns 
 a sinner of such distinction ;" and^ in like 
 manner, Mrs, Eliot and her peers are disposed 
 to be slow in condemning a person of Oscar 
 Dale's position and property. 
 
 At length the dinner drags its slow course 
 (or courses) to a close, and the ladies file out 
 of the room — for the party, as we have said, 
 is strictly conservative, and tenaciously 
 adheres to this barbarous banishment of its 
 better-half — the two last fair creatures with 
 their arms affectionately entwined round each 
 other's waist. 
 
 *' Close up, gentlemen, close up !" chirps 
 Sir Hugo. "And — and — and, pray help 
 yourselves. Mr. Dale, let me recommend 
 you this port. No ? You prefer the claret ? 
 Dear, dear, dear ! You young men have 
 quite lost the — the — the tastes of your 
 fathers — quite lost 'em — quite lost 'em. You 
 — ^you drink nothing — positively nothing !"
 
 110 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 And the old gentleman heaves a sigh over 
 the degeneracy of the English race, which 
 has suffered the divine worship of Bacchus to 
 decline into the unhallowed hands of the 
 vulgar herd. 
 
 "Know who that youngster is over the 
 way T asks Mr. Dale, in an undertone, of Mr. 
 Eliot, with whom, since the withdrawal of 
 Miss Drummond, he has struck up an ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 " That's my son," says Mr. Eliot. " Dick, 
 here's a gentleman speaking of you." 
 
 " Seen you before, m}^ friend," says Mr. 
 Dale, nodding cheerfully across the table to 
 our hero. " This afternoon. Didn't see me, 
 though, I dare say ?" 
 
 " No, I didn't see you," answers 
 Dick, bluntly, rousing himself from his 
 reverie. 
 
 " Ah! too much engaged, no doubt. Sam- 
 son and Delilah, and that sort of thing. I
 
 OSCAR DALE. Ill 
 
 love my love with an A, because she is 
 Affable ? And so on, and so on." 
 
 The colour flames hotly up into Dick's 
 cheeks, and he stammers forth in cod fusion : 
 
 " Why we— I mean I — where were you, 
 sir ^ 
 
 " Coming through the wood. You se. , 
 when I got into the park, I let my man jjo 
 on with the trap, and tried a short cut to t' e 
 house. I thought, perhaps, the skati '; 
 wouldn't be all over, and I wanted to cai. .i 
 something of it. Too late, however : o -' 
 saw you." 
 
 "Hallo, young man !" exclaim.ed Mr. Eli' , 
 in a tone of mock severity; " what's all tlii .' 
 Pray, will you explain, or I shall ask lA 
 Dale ?" 
 
 "No, no, no!" interposes the last-nan , 
 compassionating Dick's embarrassment. ' ' '• 
 don't kiss and tell. It's like my assur;. 
 to speak of the matter at all, and I beg
 
 112 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 offer your son my apologies. Let's speak of 
 something else." 
 
 And with a kindly, confidential smile at 
 our hero, he strikes off into such a fresh, 
 original trail of talk that Dick is very shortly 
 at his ease again, listening with genuine 
 amusement and interest to the converse of 
 his two neighbours opposite. But the prior 
 allusions of Mr. Dale have reached other 
 ears besides those for which they were 
 specially intended. Young Ulric Drummond 
 has been a silent and unobserved auditor 
 from the beginning, and some sudden intui- 
 tion, born and bred of jealousy, would seem 
 to have helped him to an interpretation of the 
 passing dialogue. A dull and angry flush has 
 darkened his brow, and he eyes our uncon- 
 scious hero with furtive glances of suspicion 
 and distaste. For he too cherishes his petits 
 souvenirs of Miss Lydia Brooke, and instinc- 
 tively recognises a rival. Albeit, for the
 
 OSCAR BALE. 
 
 113 
 
 present, lie holds his peace, drinking deeply, 
 and maintaining, for the rest of the eve- 
 ning, " the uncommunicating muteness of 
 fishes/' 
 
 VOL. r. 
 
 8 '
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE COUESE OF TRUE LOVE. 
 
 HE upshot of the great Muffle 
 Drummond dinner, and of sundry- 
 subsequent gatherings and discus- 
 sions, was that the candidature of Mr. Oscar 
 Dale for the county was reluctantly negatived. 
 That gentleman, indeed, was himself the fore- 
 most to scout the notion. 
 
 ** I a * fit and proper ' person ! Why, my 
 dear souls — you'll permit me to call you my 
 dear souls? — what in the world do you take me 
 for ? Sensible of the honour, and that sort of 
 thing, of course ; but really, you know, really 
 .... Well, well ! Let's say no more about
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 115 
 
 it. Shake hands all round " — (this to the de- 
 putation) — '' and drop it. We'll get Wyatt 
 o' Beechley, or Pitt o' Brookham (splendid 
 fellow, Pitt o' Brookham ; so's Wyatt !), to 
 come forward, and I'll — 'Yes ! Look here ! 
 I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go over and 
 talk to the free-and-eas — free and independent 
 electors of Norwich, and ask 'em for their 
 vote and what -you -may -call -it — interest. 
 That's all settled, then ! And now let's have 
 something to drink." 
 
 Thus genially did Mr. Dale put aside the 
 proposal with which he was visited ; but, 
 although he persistently declined the dignity 
 his neighbours would fain have conferred upon 
 him, he contrived to do so in a way that 
 rendered his refusal a void offence. His 
 liberality in subscribing to the County Hunt 
 (and, indeed, in the matter of subscriptions 
 generally) ; his sportsmanlike conduct in the 
 field ; and his off-hand hospitality, made him 
 
 8—2
 
 116 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 almost popular in spite of his notoriously 
 unconventional, unconservative mode of speech 
 and action, and he became a sort of chartered 
 libertine in respect to the licence allowed 
 him in affairs social and political. The circle 
 of his acquaintance widened in every direction, 
 but with only a limited number of fellow- 
 creatures did he arrive at terms of actual 
 intimacy. 
 
 Among these few were our friends the 
 Eliots, toward whom he had early evinced a 
 partiality. The "' sweetness and light " of 
 Charles Eliot's character attracted him from 
 the first ; and, indeed, there was much that 
 was akin in the natures of these two men. 
 Mrs. Eliot he admired for the placid con- 
 sistency of her views (alike temporal and 
 spiritual), for the v/ell-preserved charms of 
 her person, and for the gracious reception she 
 invariably accorded him at The Leas. With 
 regard to our hero, the freshness, ardour,
 
 tbt: course of true love. 117 
 
 and susceptibility of that young gentleman 
 awakened his liveliest interest and sympathy. 
 All generous souls take delight in youth, as 
 poetic souls take delight in spring, and are 
 touched by its hopeful promise, its unsullied 
 faith and verdure, its mysterious quickening, 
 and the beauty of its manifold births. 
 Oscar Dale soon made friends with Dick, 
 becoming an easy-going, informal Mentor to 
 the lad's Telemachus. The pair took long, 
 rambling, cross-country walks about the 
 county, dropping into all sorts of wayside 
 and village hostelries, where they would 
 regale themselves on bread-and-cheese and 
 beer, and freely fraternise with the local 
 worthies that frequented these humble places 
 of entertainment. Whether it were Will the 
 keeper, Tom the poacher, Bob the blacksmith, 
 or Jeremiah the parish sexton, was a matter 
 of indifference to Mr. Dale ; he made himself 
 equally at home with all ; and, in subsequent
 
 118 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 converse with Dick Eliot, the gUb allusions 
 to strange, outlandish hamlets and hospices 
 — such as the " Ringers " at Trunch, Knap- 
 ton " Goat and Compasses " (a corruption of 
 the old Puritan watchword, " God encom- 
 passeth us /"), Swafield " Barley Mow," Tit- 
 tisall " Great A," and so on — struck their 
 auditors with that sense of utter blankness 
 and unfamiliarity with which one hears a 
 person quote — say Browning's " Sordello." 
 
 Dick's mental development at this period, 
 under the subtle, fructifying influences of 
 both love and friendship, went forward rapidly. 
 New lights broke in upon him ; his stock of 
 ideas sensibly increased and multiplied ; and, 
 in secret, he began to put his passion into 
 rhyme, after the wont of clever lads in his 
 condition, sowing his *' wild oats in tame 
 verse." These poetic bantlings (poor little 
 love-children, whom their parent afterwards 
 became ashamed of, and refused to acknow-
 
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 119 
 
 ledge I) were all addressed " To Lydia," a 
 name with a fine classical flavour about it, 
 and one to which sonnets have been dedicated 
 time out of mind. No actual personality, 
 therefore, need have been implied by their 
 generic title ; and, indeed, in those later days 
 just alhided to, their author, even admitting 
 their origin, was known to deny the existence 
 of any other than abstract inspiration. But 
 still — putting this and that together, as a 
 shrewd historian is bound to do — we cannot 
 but record our belief that this denial on the 
 part of Mr. Richard Ehot was not made with 
 that strict regard for truth which wontedly 
 characterised his speech ; in short, we think 
 that he was telUng fibs, and have little doubt 
 that the Lydia in question was identical 
 with that Miss Lydia Brooke whom we can 
 prove to have been governess in his god- 
 father's family at the time. 
 
 Tramping through the mire and mist of the
 
 120 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 bedraggled days of February, riding amid the 
 dripping woods or across the saturated com- 
 mon, Dick would fondly repeat to himself 
 these firstlings of his brain in an impassioned 
 undertone. Sometimes he would seek the 
 coast, and, pacing the solitary beach, would 
 declaim, Demosthenes-like, in the face of the 
 great windy plain of waters itself. Oh ! the 
 audacity and conceit of youthful authorship ! 
 Fancy presuming to spout one's feeble, un- 
 profitable jingle of ill-rhymed platitudes 
 before such an awful audience as Ocean ! 
 The derisive scream of the sea-gull, the huge, 
 explosive laughters of the loosened winds, 
 the ominous gathering and sweeping charge 
 of the rearing wave, and then the long, 
 thunderous crash and blind up-flhiging of 
 foam — these things might have stricken 
 dumb a Dante or a Shakspeare, but, some- 
 how or other, they failed to confound our 
 hero. In extenuation, we may say that his
 
 TEE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 121 
 
 mood at least had something of congenial 
 passion and sublimity in it ; and if there was 
 a painful inadequacy of expression in his 
 efforts to give that mood a voice (as there 
 certainly was), an author's partiality pre- 
 vented him from seeing the discrepancy. 
 Dick honestly believed in the genius of his 
 juvenile muse, and was genuinely affected by 
 its utterances. 
 
 Assuredly these days were among the most 
 blissful of his life, albeit he was dwelling in a 
 fool's paradise. The pleasure of love is in 
 loving, says La Kochefoucauld ; we are 
 happier in the passion we feel than in that 
 we excite. Dick's affections were so fervid 
 and liberal, so engrossing in the delicious 
 novelty of their development, that it is small 
 wonder he failed to take strict count of the 
 value of the returns he received ; nor could a 
 lad of seventeen be expected, indeed, to 
 analyse a woman's caresses, and coldly to
 
 122 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 decide whether a kiss were a Jacob-kiss, 
 meaning pure devotion and years of patient 
 fidelity, or whether it were a Judas-kiss, 
 begotten of worldly greed and tending to 
 betrayal. Such fine discrimination (if attained 
 at all) is the acquirement of a later age. 
 
 So the weeks w^ent by ; and the first snow- 
 drop (the white flag of surrender which 
 winter, starving and hard-pressed, hangs out 
 before the gathering forces of spring) was 
 seen in the land. Anon, from over sea, came 
 the fierce March winds, as of old came the 
 blustering Northmen, to vex and harry the 
 Isle of Britain. Intervals of truce, when the 
 sun would shine and the hours be meek and 
 baby-breathed, now and again occurred ; and 
 a subtle, pervading sense of renewal and 
 revival awakened thrills of quicker life in the 
 hearts of men. 
 
 One morning, after a night of rain, Dick 
 found himself in the plantation at the back
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 12a 
 
 of Draycott Manor ; and with him was Miss 
 Brooke. 
 
 " Fancy your finding me here ! Mais cest 
 drole, par exemple ! How in the world did 
 you guess my whereabouts ? Say !" 
 
 "You told me yesterday you were coming," 
 answers Dick, rather gloomily. " You said 
 you meant to look for primroses if it were 
 fine, and so " 
 
 " And so you thought you would come also 
 to look for primroses. Very well, then ; let 
 us go seek them. But why do you appear so 
 triste, my friend 1 You seem quite cross." 
 
 " Didn't I tell you that I'm going away— 
 to Oxford — on Thursday ?" asks Dick, re- 
 proachfully. " And you don't seem to care 
 one bit, Lydia." 
 
 " Indeed, dear child, but I do care ! I 
 shall miss you very much, 3'ou know, and 
 shall think of you very often." (This in a 
 tone of cheerful prophecy, as of one who lays
 
 124 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 down a programme of minor pleasures for a 
 rainy day.) " I dare say, though, you'll soon 
 forget me ?" 
 
 "Forget you \ Oh, Lydia !" 
 
 " Well, perhaps not. I believe, after all, 
 you really care for me a little. As that last 
 sweet poem of yours says, ' Though Fate's 
 decree should bid us part For years, perchance 
 for aye. Still shall each fond and constant 
 heart ' " 
 
 " ' Fond and faithful heart,' " corrects Dick, 
 in a low voice. 
 
 "Yes, 'each fond and faithful heart Retain 
 
 — remam, i mean — remam, remam . 
 
 Oh, it's perfectly lovely !" And here. Miss 
 Brooke, who has forgotten the context, 
 breaks off into raptures, and declares that 
 every word of the poem is engraved indelibly 
 on her heart. " Your verses," says she, 
 "always remind me of — a — of Kirke 
 White's."
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 125 
 
 This happens to be the first name that 
 comes into the governess's head, and the 
 comparison, it must be admitted, is rather a 
 bold stroke. It proves, however, sufficiently 
 successful, for Dick has not yet made ac- 
 quaintance with the gentle, butcher-born 
 sonneteer, although he resolves to do so on 
 his return home without further delay. 
 
 The pair saunter along the narrow wood- 
 land track, across which the light falls in 
 slanting rays, making splashes of sudden 
 colour on the dark, wet tree-trunks, and 
 intensifying the vivid green of the spongy 
 moss that overpads their burrowing roots. 
 The shadow of coming separation is upon 
 Dick's brow, but Miss Brooke confides him 
 her hand, and he is comforted. The young 
 gentleman speaks of love and of constancy, of 
 truth and of trust, of hope and of ambition, 
 and of divers kindred topics, with consider- 
 able feeling and sentiment, although, we must
 
 126 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 ■confess, without any great originality. The 
 lady listens, shows sympathy by an occasional 
 pressure of the fingers, and derives, it is to 
 be presumed, a certain measure of gratifica- 
 tion in thus employing her senses of touch 
 and hearing. 
 
 " In April, Lydia, I shall be seventeen. I 
 shall remain at Oxford until I have got my 
 degree (which won't be very long, you 
 know !), and then I shall come back and tell 
 the governor about you. Dear old governor ! 
 He always lets me have my way ; and when 
 he hears how my happiness is concerned, I'm 
 sure he'll give his consent at once, like — like 
 a gentleman !" 
 
 This, and much more to a similar effect, 
 does Dick enunciate, with kindling eyes and 
 heart, vowing to " live and love worthily, 
 bear and be bold," and mapping out the 
 future with a touching simplicity and confi- 
 dence. Miss Brooke has a delicate part to 
 
 ^
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. ]27 
 
 play, but it is a woman's part, and she plays 
 it. She gracefully avoids committing herself 
 by any definite pledge to her boy-lover 
 (having certain private reasons for her reti- 
 cence) ; she promises, however, to write to 
 him at Oxford ; and, when they part, she 
 surrenders her ripe lips to his embrace with a 
 readiness that is wholly natural and spon- 
 taneous. Then she goes home to her pupils, 
 "whose juvenile ailments have sanctioned her 
 morning's absence from the class-room ; whilst 
 our hero, on his side, retires in a state of 
 foolish intoxication. Later in the day Miss 
 Brooke writes a long letter to a certain 
 bosom-friend in Boulogne — a letter from 
 which we quote the closing passage, as bear- 
 ing more or less directly on our present 
 history : 
 
 *' You remember, cliere amie, my mention- 
 ing in my last epistle a certain young gentle-
 
 128 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 man named Eliot, who had been making eyes 
 at me from the first moment we met ? Eh^ 
 hien ! il est vraiment Spris de moi, ce pauvre 
 gargon, and I really think if I willed it I 
 might one day become Mrs. Eliot, junior. 
 He belongs to a sufficiently good family, is 
 an only son, and not at all bad-looking — 
 something like that little Louis Dumont of 
 yours at Paris. (Don't you recollect Louis, 
 and the vacmwes we spent together at old 
 Madame Lesage's j)ensionnat ?) But then he 
 is quite a child, et je naime que les homines 
 fails, moi. (How refreshing it is to return to 
 French again after hearing nothing but 
 English — and such English as one hears in 
 Norfolk — for so many months !) Besides, 
 another thing, mignonne, is that this young 
 Eliot will not be his own master until at 
 least four years, and at my age, helas ! one 
 cannot afford to wait such an eternity for any 
 man — or, certainly, but for a very few. I have.
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 129 
 
 moreover, still a possibility — what do I say ? 
 — tiDO possibilities before me, either of which, 
 entre nous, would be a better catch than 
 Monsieur E. 
 
 " No. 1 is no less a person than the son of 
 a, baronet — a second son, it is true ; but then 
 the elder brother is imbecile, has fits and 
 things, and is always shut up out of sight. 
 People say he will not live, and in that case, 
 you see, mij admirer becomes heir to the title 
 and estate of his father, Sir Hugo, who is 
 already old. This second son of whom I 
 speak rides beautiful horses about the neigh- 
 bourhood here, and not seldom, hien entendu, 
 in the special neighbourhood of your friend 
 Lydia. 1 have chanced to meet him re- 
 peatedly, and he has lately sent me some 
 very pretty presents. But more of this in 
 my next. 
 
 " And now as to No. 2 ! What do you 
 think, ma hoane Marie, of a widower with 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 
 
 ELIOT TBE YOUNGER. 
 
 five children — such a widower, in fact, as my 
 employer, Mr. Sydney Draycott ? Certainly 
 he has said nothing very particular at 
 present ; but then, as we know, there are 
 more ways of expression than that of words, 
 and for the past six weeks or so he has been 
 astonishingly interested — iDersonally inter- 
 ested — in the progress of his children's edu- 
 cation. N'est ce pas que fai Vewharras de 
 choix f 
 
 " Adieu, chere Marie. Je t^emhrasse de 
 tout coeur. 
 
 " Bien a toi, 
 
 " Lydia."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 
 
 N April afternoon. The sunlight 
 ripples and flashes along the 
 brimming river, sparkles on the 
 fresh, moist meadowland, with its affluence of 
 many-bladed verdure, and fills the budding 
 wood with the glad radiance of its smile. 
 A lisping wind is moving amid the new-born 
 leaves, and stirring lightly through the 
 breezy belt of sedges that lines the water- 
 side. From across the fields the first cuckoo- 
 call (laden with what memories of dead 
 springs !) may now and again be heai'd ; the 
 mellow fluting of the blackbird echoes 
 
 9—2
 
 132 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 through the coppice ; and the sweet-tongued 
 thrush, seated on the topmost spray of the 
 blossoming hawthorn — 
 
 " Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note 
 Through the sleek passage of her open throat, 
 A clear, unwrinkled song." 
 
 What freshness, what fragrance, what 
 dewy brightness is abroad ! Spring is come ! 
 Spring,, the young fairy prince, whose magic 
 touch has wakened the sleeping beauty, 
 Nature, from her long winter-trance, and set 
 free the spell -bound sources of song and scent 
 and colour ! All night, in the silence and 
 darkness, the sap stirs and quickens under 
 the rugged bark ; and when the morn is 
 come, the tender film of green that hangs like 
 a mist about the wood is made denser by a 
 million tiny shoots and leaflets. Subtly and 
 unceasingly the wondrous work of regenera- 
 tion goes on ; every day is a birthday of buds 
 — every hour pregnant with manifold life.
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 133 
 
 The scene is the Thames, between Oxford 
 and Abingdon ; the precise place, Nuneham 
 Courtenay. Hence the shining river, the 
 sun-flecked meadows, the radiant woods. 
 From afar off comes the measured pulse-beat 
 of a college '^ eight," faint at first, but grow- 
 ing louder and clearer with every minute, 
 until one hears the creaking and complaining 
 of rowlocks and stretchers, the lift and rush 
 of the light boat through the eddying water, 
 and the voice of the coxswain tutoring his 
 crew. Anon, we catch sight of them — and 
 what a sight it is ! Match it if you can, my 
 young French friends, my well-beloved Ger- 
 man students ! Methinks we pretty well 
 know where and how this April afternoon is 
 being spent by you, my lads ! Pierre and 
 Jules are at the Cafe d'Homme Galant 
 {pas vrai, mes amis ?) indulging in " the 
 athletic game of dominoes ;" whilst, as for 
 Fritz and Hans, we doubt not we could
 
 134 ELIOT TKE YOUNGER. 
 
 readily '' spot " the particular smoky Gast- 
 wirihscliaft where they are flourishing and 
 thumping down the dirt}^, cornerless cards in 
 the intellectual excitement of " Seclis-und- 
 Sechzig." 
 
 With a steady, harmonious swing of lithe 
 bodies, a flashing of level oars, a rhythmical 
 sound of by-flowing waters, the "eight" 
 passes smoothly, swiftly onward, leaves the 
 pleasant woods of Nuneham behind, glides 
 beneath the black shadow of the railway 
 bridge, increases its pace in the broad reach 
 beyond, and so speeds forward, until the "Easy 
 all !" of the coxswain brings them gradually 
 to a halt at the head of the Abing^don lock. 
 
 The crew is on the bank now ; eight clean- 
 limbed young Englishmen, quick-breathing 
 after the last sharp spurt, but all (according to 
 the wont of Englishmen) seeking to disguise 
 their little symptoms of distress from each 
 other and from the critical eye of the coxswain.
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 135 
 
 " Bather a breather —   that from the 
 bridge," says one to his neighbour, having, 
 with an effort, controlled the slight unsteadi- 
 ness that threa.tens his voice. 
 
 " Yes, rather." 
 
 " Feel blown ?" 
 
 " I ? — no. Do you T 
 
 " Well, not hlown, of course ! But just 
 the least in the world winded, you know. 
 Fact is, I did a beer at Sandford." 
 
 " Deuce you did ! What a fellow you are 
 for malt !" 
 
 "Couldn't help myself, Ehot. Went to 
 Tyndal's ' wine' last night, and woke this 
 morning with a tongue like sandpaper ; 
 might have struck a match on it." 
 
 " Feel rather dry myself now. I suppose 
 old Everett '11 let us take a drink at Abing- 
 don r 
 
 " 'Course he will. We're to leave the boat 
 here till to-morrow, and walk back this even-
 
 136 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 ing. Everett's just telling the lock-keeper 
 about it." 
 
 " To-morrow, then, we shall have to come 
 by the afternoon train, and pull home T 
 
 " Yes, confound it ! That's the blessed 
 programme, I'll take odds. Are you ready ? 
 Let's make a start, then, and we'll have a 
 quiet game of billiards before we go back. 
 I'll show you a better table than that at the 
 Eagle. Not so coarse in the cloth, you know 
 — less like playing on a sheep's back !" 
 
 By this time the crew has enwrapped 
 itself in dark blue boating-coat and white 
 woollen muffler, and is straggling leisurely 
 along the towing-path toward the town. 
 Foremost are the two speakers whose con- 
 versation we have just quoted — Eliot and 
 his friend Teddy Swift, both of St. Sepul- 
 chre's. Six weeks at Oxford have not been 
 without their effect on our hero, and in 
 donning his freshman's gown he would seem
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENU. 137 
 
 to have assumed the toga virilis with a cer- 
 tain becoming sense of its significance. Nor 
 is his separation from his mistress all bitter- 
 ness and heart-sickness, as, in the exaggera- 
 tion of his young despair, he had at first 
 supposed it would be. Life, he discovers, 
 has attractions for him even apart from 
 Lydia Brooke. What Hoffmann calls "the 
 sweet habitude of being " — mere animal ex- 
 istence — is sufficient to occupy his days 
 without the aid of any violent delights or 
 divine sorrows ; and this, indeed, should be 
 the case with every healthy youngster on 
 the growing side of twenty. In after years 
 one loses one's early appetite for living, and 
 needs some sort of emotional sauce piquante 
 to help one through one's time. 
 
 On entering the town, our two fellow- 
 students made the best of their way to 
 the billiard-room which Mr. Edward Swift 
 had in view for their proposed game. It
 
 138 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 was found — and is vet to be found, we be- 
 lieve — at the Goose and Gridiron, a certain 
 small, old-fashioned hostelry in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the church. Following his 
 friend, Dick Eliot threaded a narrow sand- 
 strewn passage, stumbled up a steep, dimly- 
 lighted staircase, and, pushing open a 
 swing-door covered with tattered baize, be- 
 held the billiard-room itself. 
 
 A young girl — not more than sixteen, 
 perhaps, with the sleeves of her print dress 
 rolled up to her elbows — was seated on the 
 end of the table, idly swinging her feet to 
 and fro. A pretty girl, certainly, but withal 
 terribly untidy. At the moment that the 
 two gentlemen appeared she was in the act 
 of applying a fresh-drawn pot of porter to 
 her lips, and, after burying her face in the 
 tankard for a second or so, she emerged, 
 like Venus, from the foam. 
 
 "' Morning, Phoebe," said Swift. " Hope 
 I see you well ?"
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 139 
 
 "Nicely, thank'ee ; how's yourselfl" an- 
 swered the girl, glibly, sliding to her feet 
 as she spoke, and drawing the back of her 
 hand deliberately across her mouth. " Want 
 a game ? Billiards or pyramids ?" 
 
 " Billiards, please — a hundred up. You'll 
 not give me points, I suppose, Eliot ? By 
 the way, this is my friend Eliot, Phoebe." 
 
 " Oh, I know. Heard Mr. Tyndall speak 
 about you,'' said the girl, turning toward 
 our hero. *' You rode his horse last week 
 at the match here, didn't you ? That w^as 
 the day I was away. He says you're a 
 very good fellow. Are you ?" 
 
 "Well 1 scarcely know," stammered 
 
 Dick, somewhat taken aback. " At all 
 events, you'd think me a very conceited one 
 if I said yes." 
 
 The girl smiled, shrugged her shoulders, 
 and proceeded to clear the table for play, 
 whereupon Swift took the initiative by giving 
 the conventional miss in baulk.
 
 140 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 "One — love," called the girl, marking the 
 game with the mechanical promptness of 
 habit, the while her gaze, however, wandered 
 idly toward the window and away over the 
 breezy April distance. Always inordinately 
 susceptible to female presence, Dick Eliot 
 from time to time glanced at her as she 
 sat tilting back her chair against the white- 
 washed wall — the "jigger," wherewith she 
 could move the marking-pegs without rising, 
 held wand-wise in her hand. 
 
 Fair-haired and blue-eyed was this maid 
 of the inn, who acted as billiard-marker to 
 mine host of the Goose and Gridiron — a slim, 
 pliant, active, half lawless-looking figure, 
 oddly at variance with its surroundings. 
 Born in a keeper's cottage, in the leafy 
 heart of a Welsh valley, where a tumbling 
 trout stream fed the green solitude with 
 sound, Phoebe Langham had grown from 
 childhood to maidenhood in a state of happy
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 141 
 
 vagrancy, the woods and hills her play- 
 ground, the keeper's dogs her playfellows. 
 For a dozen glad years she had followed 
 the devices and desires of her own gipsy 
 heart in absolute freedom, as genuine a 
 daughter of Dame Nature as ever was dryad 
 or oread of old. Nature, indeed, supplied 
 the place of the mother she had lost in 
 infancy, and fostered the forlorn little one 
 to the best of her ample abilities. But this 
 state of things was not destined to last. 
 Ere Phoebe was thirteen she was left parent- 
 less, her father, the keeper, being slain, one 
 moonless autumn night, in a poaching fray. 
 Then it was that the girl came to Abingdon, 
 taking up her abode at the Goose and Grid- 
 iron, of which house her uncle, old Joe 
 Langham, was landlord. Thenceforward her 
 life was an altered one, and the sweet open- 
 air licence and liberty of earlier days became 
 as a dream to her. Such dream as this may
 
 142 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 have dwelt with Proserpine — a dream of 
 Sicilian summers and the flower-decked meads 
 of Enna — in looking backward from the 
 shadow-haunted shores of Hades. 
 
 Not that Phoebe Langham was greatly 
 given to dreaming, retrospective or other- 
 wise. Phoebe was a born Bohemian, and 
 displayed a philosophic, Mark Tapleyish spirit 
 under adversity, which could not be too 
 highly commended. Indeed, it was only 
 this natural buoyancy which kept her afloat 
 on the sea of troubles she seemed destined 
 to encounter, even as stray straws, forsaken 
 corks, and the like — things deficient in 
 gravity and purpose — will outride storma 
 that send their weightier brethren to the 
 bottom. Full of jest and youthful jollity, 
 and with a disregard of the morrow complete 
 enough to be courageous, she adapted herself 
 to her new surroundings with cheerful equa- 
 nimity. Since her election to the office of
 
 A ORANGE OF SOEJSFE. Wi 
 
 billiard-marker by her beer-bemused old 
 uncle, the publican, the fame of her pretty 
 face, her nimble wit, had spread abroad 
 among the golden youth of the neighbouring 
 university, and had made the Goose and 
 Gridiron a favourite house of call for such 
 of the students as were wont to visit 
 Abingdon. Phoebe was eminently sociable ; 
 and even if the grim old fairy, Lindley 
 Murray, had stayed away from her christen- 
 ing and withheld the gift of grammar from 
 her tongue, her speech was invariably natural, 
 easy, and expressive. 
 
 *' Tell you what, Eliot," exclaimed Swift, 
 at the conclusion of the first game. " I vote 
 we give Everett and the other fellows the 
 slip. They won't wait for us, you know ; 
 and instead of tramping back at six, we 
 might hire a trap of Joe Langham here, and 
 tool over at eight ?" 
 
 Dick shook his head.
 
 144 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 " Oh, haDg it ! why not ? Langham '11 
 find us a horse and trap, I'm sure. Let's 
 just ask him. Where's Mr. Langham, 
 Phoebe T 
 
 " Mr. Langham is in bed with — with 
 
 what's-a-name," said Phoebe. 
 
 " Mrs. Langham, let's hope," interjected 
 Swift, sotto voce. 
 
 "With lumbago," continued the girl, 
 gravely. " And he isn't nice to visit just 
 now neither. Only open his door, and he'd 
 as lief chuck boots at your head as look 
 at you — I think liefer I" 
 
 " Pleasant old party ! Perhaps, then, 
 Eliot, we'd better not disturb him, after all. 
 We can easily get a conveyance elsewhere ; 
 so just say you'll stop, and I'll start a fresh 
 game." 
 
 " As you like, Swift ; have it your own 
 way. Only mind ! there'll be a jolly row." 
 
 (Parenthetically, what a characteristic form
 
 A CHANGE OF SCENE. 145 
 
 of expression this is! How the rough courage 
 of the Briton, who laughs at danger and 
 difficulty, and disappointment and overthrow 
 — who "grins and bears it," and "comes 
 up smiling " — how it crops out in this gro- 
 tesque application of the adjective ! A young 
 man, say, quarrels v.dth his father, and 
 straightway is turned adrift upon the world 
 to sink or swim, as luck may have it. Very 
 well ! Hereafter, working with his pal, 
 beneath the blinding sun, through the mud 
 and refuse of a Californian gully ; or begging 
 tobacco of his stockman on some lonelv 
 Australian sheep-run ; or patiently blacking 
 his officer's boots in some gusty, ill-ventilated 
 English barracks — he will refer, with a smile, 
 to the disagreement which has altered the 
 whole course of his existence as " a jolly 
 row 1" 
 
 Take another instance. Two half-naked 
 men meet in a twelve-foot ring, pound each 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 ELIOT THE YOVNGEB. 
 
 — — , — '^—   < 
 
 other out of all semblance to humanity, 
 perhaps get disfigured for life — and we cheer- 
 fully record the encounter as "a merry 
 mill." 
 
 A still more famous illustration, is afforded 
 by the description of the tournament in 
 " Ivanhoe." " Although," says Scott, " only 
 four knights, including one v*^ho was 
 smothered by the heat of his armour, had 
 died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty 
 were desperatel}'" wounded, four or five of 
 whom never recovered. Several more w^ere 
 disabled for life ; and those who escaped best 
 carried the marks of the conflict to the grave 
 with them. Hence " (note the hence) "it is 
 always mentioned in the old records as the 
 Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of 
 Ashby." 
 
 The two students, Kichard Eliot and 
 Edward Swift, played billiards, drank beer, 
 ijmoked cigars, talked slang, and conducted
 
 A CSANGE OF SCE^E. 147 
 
 themselves generally after the established wont 
 of Young Oxford until eight p.m., Miss Lang- 
 ham duly attending their behests. Although 
 a better player than his adversary, our hero 
 contrived to lose the majority of the games 
 they contested, for his attention was con- 
 siderably diverted from the balls by the young 
 person named Phosbe. The girl's spontaneous, 
 irresponsible prattle, and the easy tone of 
 fellowship she assumed in addressinor her 
 companions were something novel to his 
 small experience of womankind, and 
 novelty had ever an especial charm for 
 him. 
 
 " A penny for your thoughts," said Phoebe 
 once, in an interval of play, encountering the 
 gaze he turned towards her. 
 Dick started, and stammered : 
 
 " I beg your pardon, but, really, I " 
 
 " Won't sell 'em for a penny V broke 
 in the young lady, cheerfully. " Very 
 
 10—2
 
 148 BLIOT THE YOUNGEK. 
 
 well, then ! I'll toss you tuppence or 
 nothing ?" 
 
 Dick intimated that his thoughts was not 
 for sale at any price. 
 
 " Meaning it's no business of mine, T s'pose ? 
 All right! Don't you think too much, 
 though — 't isn't good for you. I once went 
 to the theatre, and saw a piece called Julia 
 Seizer, where there's two fellers named Brutus 
 and Cashus — bad lots, both of 'em ! And 
 Seizor, he don't half like Cashus ; he fancies 
 fat men better. Cashus, he says, always looks- 
 peckish ; he thinks too much, and that makes 
 him dangerous. So just you mind what 
 you're about, Mr. Eliot !" 
 
 "Yes, I'll be careful," said Dick, smiling.. 
 *' I've seen the piece myself, by-the-way, and 
 know all about it." 
 
 " Have you, though ? Well, isn't it jolly ? 
 Don't you like that part where what's-his- 
 name gets up in the market-place, and keeps
 
 A ORANGE OF SCENE. 149 
 
 saying, ' For Ber-rewtus is a Honourable 
 man I ' " 
 
 The wa}^ in which Phcebe Langham de- 
 livered herself of this quotation, striking an 
 attitude as she spoke, was so absurdly sug- 
 gestive of the stilted and stagey original she 
 had witnessed, that the two young men broke 
 into an involuntary peal of laughter, the girl 
 good-humouredly joining. 
 
 " It's all very \xe\{ for you two to call out, 
 but that's just how he did it, I'm sure ! First, 
 you know, be hoisted up his eyebrows — so ; 
 then he smiled, in a sort of sarcastic way, like 
 a thingamy — a hyena before it begins to 
 laugh ; and then came his speech about 
 Brutus being an honourable man. Oh, it 
 was fine I" 
 
 As the measured strokes of eisfht boomed 
 sonorously over the housetops from the belfry 
 of the neighbouring church, Dick and his friend 
 descended to the stable-yard of the Goose
 
 150 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 and Gridiron, where a dogcart (hired from 
 an adjacent mews) was waiting their con- 
 venience. 
 
 " Bye-bye !" called out Swift, waving his 
 hand in the direction of the billiard-room 
 windov^^s, which overlooked the yard. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Phoebe Langham, lean- 
 ing out upon the sill. "Good-bye, Mr. 
 Eliot." 
 
 " Good-bye," responded Dick, raising his 
 hat. 
 
 The horse's head was released by the groom- 
 in charge, who straightway jumped up on 
 the back seat of the conveyance. Dick 
 glanced round over his shoulder as they 
 turned out of the long cobble-stoned yard into 
 the street, and, thrown into strong relief by 
 the bright light behind her, beheld the 
 girlish form of Phoebe Langham still lingering 
 at the open window of the deserted billiard- 
 room. A sense of something lonely, forlorn,.
 
 A CHANaE OF SCENE. 151 
 
 unfriended, in her position struck him at the 
 sight, awaking his ready sympathies, and 
 appealing, with a thrill of subtle suggestion, 
 to his poetic fancy. To an ordinary observer 
 the thing was ordinary enough — as, indeed, 
 most things are ordinary to ordinary people 
 — but imagination, like moonshine, softens 
 and etherealises whatsoever it touches. A 
 girl at a window, with the familiar accessories 
 of night and stars, may seem, perhaps, suf- 
 ficiently commonplace; but the poet, to whom 
 nothing is commonplace, lays hold of this 
 simple material, and presently reproduces it 
 in some such rare, heart -haunting scene, 
 fraught with beauty and passion, as that 
 which reveals the fateful love of Juliet. 
 
 " What do you think of Phoebe Langham?" 
 said Swift, suddenly, throwing away the 
 stump of his cigar. 
 
 " Eh ? I beg your pardon V 
 
 " What do you think of Phcjebe Langham V
 
 152 
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 " Of Phoebe Langham ?" 
 '' Yes. What do you think of her ?" 
 '' Ob ! I— I don't know," said Dick. 
 And he didn't.
 
 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 "man proposes." 
 
 PR-TL passed, and the hedges grew 
 white beneath the scented snows 
 of May. In the meadows the 
 grass was lush and odorous ; the pastures 
 were yellow with crowfoot, and the gardens 
 had come in for their <!;olden heritaj^e of 
 laburnum. All the air was laden with 
 perfume — the delicate perfume of the wild- 
 brier and the woodbine, the richer fragrance 
 of the lilac and the guelder-rose. Now the 
 hours were ever jocund with the song of 
 birds ; for, soon as a gleam of twilight glad- 
 dened the east, the skylark — God's poet —
 
 154 ELIOT THE YOUNQElt. < 
 
 was lifting its hymn of praise heavenward : 
 whilst, throughout the dewy darkness be- 
 tween sunset and sunrise, the nightingale 
 poured forth the fulness of its heart, flooding 
 the countryside with melodious passion. 
 
 On an evening of this same merry month 
 of May, Miss Brooke might have been seen 
 loitering slowly through a Norfolk lane, or a 
 loke^ as in East Anglian dialect it is called. 
 The sun had not wholly disappeared, but day 
 was fast drawing to its close ; and, as the 
 tuneless cawing of the wordy rooks subsided 
 with the waning light, a dim silence stole 
 over the widespread landscape. A short half- 
 dozen leagues away was the many-voiced 
 city, with a glare of gas in its narrow streets, 
 a roll of wheels, and the hum of shifting 
 crowds ; but out here in the country the hour 
 was one of infinite tenderness and repose. 
 Save for the faint, w^andering sounds of the 
 f.irmstead, and the fainter sound of the sea as
 
 " MAN PROPOSES." 155 
 
 it broke on the beach and retired with a pro- 
 longed chattering of loose shingle, nothing- 
 arose to trespass against the sweet twilight- 
 truce. A godlike hush and harmony prevailed 
 over all. 
 
 What should be the mood of one to be in 
 unison with external Nature at such a 
 moment ? A gentle, a pure, a loving and 
 lovable mood, surely. What was the mood 
 of Lydia Brooke, lingering in the lane that 
 skirted the woods of Hethercote Hall, a 
 solitary witness of the placid beauty of the 
 eventide ? She paused to pluck a spray of 
 honeysuckle from the hedge, and meditated 
 thus : 
 
 " If Mr. Draycott means to make me Mrs. 
 D., as I believe he does, it will be wiser to 
 throw over young Eliot, and give Master 
 Drummond his conga without further doubt 
 or delay." 
 
 The gentleman last alluded to was at that
 
 156 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 moment on his way to meet Miss Brooke, an 
 unwonted brightness in his eye, a seed of en- 
 nobUng thought, love-begotten, in his heart. 
 Under the purifying influence of a strong un- 
 selfish passion, the low nature of the man 
 awoke to higher promptings, and attained a 
 certain graciousness foreign to its ordinary 
 currents. Nor was Ulric Muffle Drummond 
 enjoying a monopoly of this " divine afflatus." 
 Over at Oxford, his rival, Dick Eliot, was 
 seated at an upper casement of the venerable 
 college of St. Sepulchre, looking down on the 
 tvvilit quadrangle, and musing fondly on his 
 aVjsent idol. Ach, du Ueber Gott ! the waste 
 of generous emotion, the unprofitable spending 
 of soul, that goes on in this pitiful little 
 planet of ours ! Sons and daughters of men, 
 we all start in life with a given patrimony of 
 love ; but in nine cases out often we squander 
 our inheritance, dissipate our small heart- 
 fortune, in the blindest and most improvident
 
 " MAN PR OP OSES." 1 57 
 
 of manners. What is the result 1 As the 
 years pass on we find our original possession 
 so woefully diminished, that we have to 
 be close and penurious, saving our affections, 
 and doling out, alas ! a carefully-counted 
 rouleau of small chang:© where before we would 
 have bestowed a handful of untold gold. Ah f 
 how mean and miserly, how niggardly and 
 distrustful, we have become ! Whereas, had 
 we only made a wise investment of our capital 
 in youth, instead of playing at ducks and 
 drakes with it, it might have been returning 
 us cent, per cent., nor need we now be shiver- 
 ing solitarily on the brink of bankruptcy. It 
 is an evil hour, brethren, when, drawing a 
 draft on love, we get it back on our hands with 
 the answer — " no effects." 
 
 The leisurely chiming of a clock, borne ovei 
 the still tree-tops from the Hall stables, 
 aroused Miss Brooke from the reverie into 
 which she had fallen ; and, a second or two
 
 158 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 later, was heard the rapid hoof-beat of an 
 approachiog horse. The animal was evidently 
 at a gallop — a fact which Miss Brooke, guess- 
 ing at its rider, promptly ascribed to a lover's 
 impatience. Herein, however, she was mis- 
 taken. Instead of Ulric Muffle Drummond, 
 the horseman turned out to be his groom, 
 who, at sight of the lady, pulled hard at his 
 bridle, and brought his panting steed to a 
 standstill. 
 
 " Beg pardon, miss," said the man, touch- 
 ing his hat and speaking in hurried tones ; 
 " but did you happen to come by the way o' 
 ^he willage ?" 
 
 '' No. Why ?" 
 
 *' Thought perhaps you might ha' seen th' 
 young master, miss. I'm arter 'im, and 
 where to look for 'im I know no more nor 
 the dead ! His brother, Mr. Boger, ha' bin 
 took wi' a fit, miss, and 'ont last a hour, the 
 •doctor say. Servant t' ye, miss."
 
 " MAN PROPO SES." 159 
 
 And, touching his hat once more, the 
 groom put spurs to his horse and abruptly 
 •disappeared, leaving Miss Brooke, standing ia 
 mid-lane, to ponder over his intelligence at 
 her leisure. 
 
 A word from her lips would have detained 
 the man, but this word had not been spoken ; 
 and now there rose up within her a sudden 
 half- acknowledged desire that the messenger 
 might not fall in with his master ere the 
 impending meeting with herself. 
 
 Fate, or fortune, or whatever it may be 
 which favours the Misses Brooke of this lower 
 -sphere, was on her side ; for when, at the 
 •expiration of some five or six minutes, the 
 young gentleman in question arrived at his 
 appointment, it was clearly apparent that no 
 inkling of the course of events at the Hall had 
 yet reached him. 
 
 " Evening to you, Miss Brooke. Awfully 
 good of you to come here in answer to my
 
 160 ELIGT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 note. I was afraid you miglit cut up rough 
 about it — be offended, you know." 
 
 Miss Brooke gently returned the emphatic 
 squeeze of the hand with which she was 
 greeted, and sighed softly. 
 
 '^ When one has so few real friends as T, Mr. 
 Drummond, one cannot afford to be easily 
 offended with them." 
 
 " That's all right, then !" exclaimed her 
 companion, somewhat inappositely, the while 
 he slashed nervously with his cane at the 
 projecting twigs of the hedgerow. "It'll be— 
 I mean I — you read my note ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I read the note." 
 
 " xVh ! See the postscript — the bit at the 
 bottom T 
 
 " Yes, I read that too. You say there, 
 don't you, that you've something particular 
 to tell me ? And " 
 
 " So I have, b'Jove ! and no mistake about 
 it. Look here, Miss Brooke ! I'm not much 
 
 I
 
 " MAN proposes:' 161 
 
 good at talking, and that sort of thing ; but 
 I say what I mean, and what I say I stick to. 
 That's my form, you know ! Now if I'd got 
 the gift of the gab like some fellows — 
 like young Eliot, for instance," added the 
 speaker, glancing with sudden suspicion at 
 the lady beside him, who, however, betrayed 
 no overt emotion at the mention of the 
 name. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Drummond ?" 
 
 " Well, you know, in that case I might 
 spin no end of a yarn — talk till kingdom come, 
 in fact. But that's not my sort. I'm rough, 
 Miss Brooke — oh yes ! I'll own I'm rough — 
 but then I'm ready, too." 
 
 A pause. Miss Brooke cast down her 
 eyes, trifled with her parasol, finally describ- 
 ing an irregular O with its point in the loose 
 sandy soil at her feet. 
 
 " I don't quite understand, Mr. Drum- 
 mond," said she, still looking down, and 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 162 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 designing another — a worse one — enough 
 to make Giotto turn in his grave ! 
 
 " Not understand !" cried the young man, 
 almost angrily. " Not understand ! Can't 
 you see I love you, Miss Brooke ? Don't you 
 know I've been mad about you ever since I 
 saw you, and haven't cared for a single 
 blessed thing but yourself from that day to 
 this ? Lord, Lord ! what a time I've 
 had of it ! Hunting, shooting, dogs, horses, 
 ratting, or rabbiting — it's been all one to me ! 
 I've lost taste for the lot. You re what I'm 
 thinking of, Miss Brooke, from morning till 
 night, and if you won't have me, why the 
 devil must ! Will you have me, Miss Brooke ? 
 Yes or no ? Will you or won't you ?" 
 
 The earnestness of the speaker was past 
 question, and there could not now be any 
 further affectation of failing to catch his 
 meaning. Miss Brooke felt that the moment 
 for decision was come, and, indeed, her de-
 
 "MAN proposes:' 163 
 
 cision had already been made ere it was 
 demanded. What it might have been but 
 for the pregnant piece of news that had so 
 casually reached her a quarter of an hour pre- 
 viously, it would, perhaps, be presumptuous 
 to inquire. The mind feminine is a delicatelj' 
 poised affair^ and a very slight thing will 
 incline it to one side or the other. Jack and 
 Tom, haply, are weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting, whereas Harry (a man of 
 somewhat more substance, it is true) triumph- 
 antly turns the scale. So it has been from 
 time immemorial, and so, we suppose, it will 
 be as long as the sun goes its round, wherein 
 {ahsit omen !) Virgo and Libra are everlast- 
 ingly ranged together. 
 
 Miss Brooke, then, made such answer to 
 her suitor's appeal as became a young person 
 with a due appreciation of her own welfare — 
 in other words, she accepted his offer, lifting 
 him thereby into a seventh heaven of satis- 
 
 11—2
 
 164 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 faction. Nor was this satisfaction barren of 
 some sort of real good — some genuine and not 
 unworthy outgrowth of humanity. So divine 
 is love in its essence that, though it spring 
 up amid the rankest weeds of worldly circum- 
 stance, it yet will struggle to the light and 
 bear fair fruit. We can never wholly foretell 
 the evil issues of our deeds : we cannot 
 always see the good they will evoke. Lydia 
 Brooke's selfish encouragement of her wooer 
 had certain subtle, if transitory, influences on 
 the moral nature of the man, of which she 
 had not probably taken count. Just as the 
 pure air of the mountain height will stimulate 
 the physical energies to more active life, so 
 the keen and novel atmosphere of a joy 
 attained will quicken and expand the spiritual 
 being. Ulric Drummond, for the time, was 
 kindled with the generous impulses of a 
 larger soul. Fortunate love is an enchanter 
 that can ennoble the least noble. What but
 
 " MAN FEOPOSi:S." 
 
 165 
 
 Beauty's love transformed the Beast ? and 
 who shall determine the finer possibilities 
 even of a Caliban — " deboshed fish " though 
 he was ! — had but Miranda smiled upon 
 him ?
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 
 
 OHWICH," said Mr. Oscar Dale, 
 epigrammatically, " is a place 
 where all the women are attrac- 
 tive, and all the men are — attracted ! Let 
 us go to Norwich, Eliot." 
 
 Mr. Eliot drew from between his lips the 
 amber mouthpiece of his meerschaum, puffed 
 a ring of smoke into the roof of the verandah, 
 beneath whose shade they were sitting, and 
 lazily turned his head to the open window 
 behind them. 
 " Alicia !" 
 " What is it, Charles ?"
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 167 
 
 " Dale wants me to go to Norwich." 
 
 Mrs. Eliot came forward from the inner 
 gloom of the drawing-room to the threshold 
 of the low French casement. 
 
 "Indeed, Mr. Dale, I only wish he ivould 
 go to Norwich ; there are so many things I 
 stand in need of. That wool, you know, 
 Charles, which you forgot on Tuesday ! And 
 then there's the book Lady Mufl&e Drummond 
 recommended us — ' Backslidinof Britain ' — and 
 the tickets for the concert, and the wine you 
 promised to taste for Cousin Sydney, and my 
 watch at Mower's ! Pray, make him go, Mr. 
 Dale ; and get him to take you to my sister 
 Deborah's house in The Close : she'll be 
 charmed to see you, Tm sure." 
 
 "Ah! just so," said Mr. Eliot dubiously. 
 " But I'm afraid, my dear, we shall scarcely 
 have time to call on Deborah to-day. So 
 many commissions, you see. Perhaps, on the 
 whole, we'd better postpone our visit to The
 
 168 ELIOT THE YOVNGEB. 
 
 Close until some other afternoon, when we 
 shall have more leisure to talk to the o — only- 
 woman I ever do talk to in Norwich/' con- 
 cluded Mr. Eliot, cleverly recovering himself 
 on the brink of a precipice. 
 
 "Well, it's as you like, of course; but 
 really, Charles, it's quite an age since you 
 went to see Deborah last. However, if you 
 make no call on her to-day, you'll be able to 
 get home to dinner. Mr. Dale, may I hope 
 to see you back with my husband ?" (Charles 
 Eliot's foot stole out and gently touched his 
 friend's.) 
 
 " You're very kind, Mrs. Eliot, and I should 
 be only too happy to return here if it were 
 not my steward's night at Idlewiid. Once a 
 week, you must know, I'm delivered over to 
 
 the well ! let us be figurative, and say to 
 
 the Foul Fiend. In other words, I'm called 
 upon to undergo an ordeal known as * going 
 through the accounts ' with Mr. Maccaboy,
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 169 
 
 my overseer. Maccaboy is a Scotchman ; 
 lie's also a Beast — capital B.^ as Naomi Tighe, 
 in School, calls Krux — ^and he won't let me 
 off an item. At first I used to try to evade 
 business detail and discussion by plunging 
 blindly into any subject I thought likely to 
 divert his attention — such as the fancied 
 likeness of Edinburgh to Athens (stress on 
 fancied) ; or the lyrical superiority of 
 Beranger to Burns. But, dear, dear ! it was 
 all in vain ! Of Athens he knew nothing ; of 
 Beranger, ditto ; moreover, he complacently 
 insinuated that no man born south of the 
 Tweed had impartiality enough to form a 
 'joost aistimate o' the warks o' Babbie 
 Burns !' Thus sat upon, I fell an easy victim 
 to the enemy." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Dale ! I fear you are not a man 
 of business. Neither is Charles — not in the 
 slightest — and yet, do you know, he has 
 actually suffered himself to be made a director
 
 170 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 of the East Anglian Bank, and goes over to 
 Norwich every Tuesday — (or Thursday is it ?) 
 — to sit at the Board there !" 
 
 " Where I speak as one having authority — 
 a thing I cannot do at home — and get a 
 guinea and a glass of sherry. A p7^opos — if 
 Draycott should call, Alicia, tell him I'm 
 gone to taste the wine he talked of. I shall 
 be back early, I dare say ; but you need not 
 keep dinner for me after six." 
 
 A bare half-hour's w^alk from the market- 
 place, on the leafy outskirts of the leafy city 
 of Norwich, there stands a picturesque-look- 
 ing old place, called The Coppice. It consists 
 of a large house and small grounds ; a house 
 with a cavernous, creeper-covered porch, and 
 with three projecting peaks to the roof in 
 front. A house, moreover, rich in diamond- 
 paned, deep-silled windows, and surmounted 
 by superfluous stacks of tall, twisted, Laocoon- 
 like chimneys, whereon the starlings have
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 171 
 
 chirped and chattered and reared theii* dusky 
 broods for the last centurv and a half. 
 
 Here — with an hereditary toleration of the 
 starlings aforesaid ; an hereditary respect for 
 the family name ; an hereditary taste for old 
 wine and the works of old writers, and an 
 acquired taste for his only daughter, Mar- 
 garet — lived Kalph Oglevie, widower ; a man 
 whose satirical tongue and overt cynicism 
 were feared by his milder provincial neigh- 
 bours, as the " cat " is feared by the modern 
 rough, or as little Fitz-Caudle fears the 
 woman who has vowed to love, honour, and 
 obey him. 
 
 But the Diogenes of this, as of an elder day, 
 is by no means a person ignored by society ; 
 more especially when the tub he inhabits is 
 of such dimensions as to embrace a dining- 
 room, cellar, and stabling. And if, too, in 
 addition to these desirable things, he be 
 possessed of a daughter having her father's
 
 172 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 brain without his brusqueness, his culture 
 without his caustic temper ; then the name of 
 Diogenes may fairly enough be inckided in 
 one's visitors' list. 
 
 " I like the Oglevies," Charles Eliot would 
 say, confidentially ; " and whenever you find 
 the mental palate cloyed with overmuch 
 intercourse with everyday acquaintances, let 
 me advise you, Dale, to seek them out. They 
 give quite a fillip to one's intellectual ap- 
 petite. Take 'em together — daughter and 
 dad — sherry and bitters !" 
 
 With some such sentiment as this upon 
 his lips it was that the master of The Leas, 
 accompanied by Mr. Oscar Dale, found him- 
 self at the gates of The Coppice on the after- 
 noon which brought them both to Norwich. 
 The two gentlemen were not unfrequent 
 visitors at the house of the Oglevies, although 
 Mr. Dale's introduction to it was of much 
 more recent date than his companion's. The
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 173 
 
 latter, indeed, was regarded almost in the light 
 of an old friend_, and was welcomed accordingly. 
 
 " Mr. Eliot," exclaimed Margaret Oglevie, 
 shaking hands with him as she spoke, " I've 
 a bone to pick with you ! A bone ? — a set 
 of bones ! a perfect skeleton ! Why didn't 
 you look in last week ? And where, sir, are 
 the bulbs you promised me ?" 
 
 " The bulbs are in bed. They've a large 
 one all to themselves in the back-garden. 
 Alicia put them there yesterday, without 
 knowing of my promise to you ; and, as they 
 were not yet up when I came away, I thought 
 I wouldn't disturb them. You shall have 
 some others, however, from Petalli's." 
 
 " Thanks, in advance. But tell me — why 
 didn't you call last week ?" 
 
 " Business, my dear Miss Oglevie, business! 
 Board meeting, and so on. ' I know a 
 bank whereat my wild time goes !' and hence^ 
 you see, my non-appearance."
 
 174 ELIOT TSE YOUNGEE. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Do you hear that, papa ?" 
 "I do ; and it's satisfactory to feel that 
 the financial interests of the community are 
 attended to by Mr. EHot, if by no one else. 
 Young ladies like yourself, Margaret, can 
 scarcely understand the commercial ardour of 
 a man such as he. What the fashion-critique, 
 say of Le Follet, is to you, the city article 
 of the Times is to him ; and the zest which 
 you have in a five o'clock tea he brings to a 
 ten o'clock board. Do I state the case fairly 
 Mr. Dale?" 
 
 '' Perfectly so, I should say ; Eliot's what- 
 you-may-call-it — auri sacra fames — is notor- 
 ious. Everybody must have noticed how 
 wholly he gives himself up to money and 
 monev-matters. Man delig-hts him not, nor 
 woman either — unless, indeed, it be the man 
 or woman stamped on a coin." 
 
 "What a pity!" sighed Miss Oglevie. 
 '' And he used to be so nice !"
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS, 175 
 
 " I used !" Diurmured Charles Eliot, echo- 
 ing the sigh. 
 
 Miss Oglevie smiled. 
 
 " Come, come ! Let us change the subject: 
 it's grown personal and pathetic. Mr. Dale, 
 I want your advice about my aquarium here. 
 It needs restocking. Where can I get a score 
 or so of small fish at a reasonable price ?" 
 
 " A score or so ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And small?" 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 " Buy a box of sardines." 
 
 " Absurd ! But, seriously, where do you 
 think I can go for what I want V 
 
 "Come to Idlewild, Miss Ocrlevie. Mrs. 
 Eliot will drive over with you some day, I've 
 no doubt. We've a pond there that's a per- 
 fect museum of monstrosities. Eliot calls it 
 the Tadpolar Sea. What he means I don't 
 know; but that doesn't matter. At all events,
 
 176 ELIOT TBE YOUNGER. 
 
 I'll engage you get quite a miraculous draught 
 of fishes, if you'll only try — and without toil- 
 ing: all nig'ht either," 
 
 " How delightful ! And is it really such 
 a happy hunting ground as you say ? Newts, 
 now — are there any newts ?" 
 
 " Newts ! Eliot, are there any newts T 
 
 '"' Hundreds ! Newts, toads, efts, owls, 
 bats, beetles, and blind mice ! The place is 
 a regular witch's cauldron." 
 
 " Don't exaoforerate ! I shall ask Mrs. Eliot 
 to take me to test it. Ponds always have a 
 fascination for me ; and so, too, have logs 
 and stones that have been lying long undis- 
 turbed. To turn them over, and come sud- 
 denly upon all the queer, shut-away life 
 beneath, is as exciting to me as the discovery 
 of a new world is to an astronomer." 
 
 As Miss Oglevie finished speaking, the 
 arrival of fresh visitors demanded her atten- 
 tion. These were Mrs. Towle, the wife of
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. l77 
 
 the vicar in whose parish The Coppice stood ; 
 her daughter, and a certain old-lady relative, 
 widow of a local apothecary, whom death had 
 mysteriously raised to the dignity of a 
 physician. Sundry other visitors shortly 
 afterwards appeared, for it was one of the 
 days on which Miss Oglevie made a point of 
 being at home, and hence her afternoon tea 
 found a fair circle of consumers. 
 
 " Miss Oglevie," said Mrs. Towle, in her 
 sounding, self-confident voice, " I must secure 
 you for our Girl's Education Movement. The 
 vicar has a meeting on Monday evening, 
 seven o'clock, at the old schoolroom. I'm for 
 plain sewing and Holy Writ ; and if they 
 will have anything more — geography. You 
 can't better that, I think ?" 
 
 " Someone was saying that to teach sewing 
 nowadays is a waste of time and energy,'* 
 said Margaret. " I believe it was Mr. 
 McLoman. He maintains that machinery 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 ELIOT TSE YOUNGER. 
 
 will soon supersede hand-work entirely — that 
 we shall be all forks and no fingers." 
 
 " Dear ! that ' economy of labour !' " broke 
 in Mr. Eliot. " How weary one gets hearing 
 of it, and how persistently its advocates will 
 drag it in where it's out of place !" 
 
 " Quite so, Eliot, quite so," quoth Mr. 
 Oglevie, smartly rapping his snuffbox. 
 " Your husband will wake up some fine morn- 
 ing, Mrs. Towle, and find his occupation gone; 
 for I suspect we shall be having a soul-saving 
 apparatus next, of ' 40-parson power,' as 
 Sydney Smith puts it." 
 
 In Mrs. Towle there was about as much 
 sense of humour as there is succulency in 
 a cinder; and she answered with some degree 
 of asperity : , 
 
 *' Mr. Towle's work, Mr. Oglevie, is not 
 to be classed with ordinary occupations. 
 What mere mechanical agency, pray, can 
 interfere with functions such as his ?"
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 179 
 
 " Ah ! what indeed ?" sighed the elderly 
 relative, wagging her widowed head remon- 
 stratino-lv at Mr, Ooflevie. "Those who labour 
 in the Lord's vineyard are not to be set aside 
 by steam-ploughs, let people say what they 
 win. And as for me, my dear " (drifting off 
 confidentially to a young lady at her side), 
 " I can't do with machine-made things at all ! 
 I'm sure the way in which that last gown of 
 mine from Martin's came unstitched was 
 most disheartening. Right down the seam, 
 you know !" 
 
 " How very shameful !" said the young 
 person, sympathetically; and presently a small 
 assembly of heads feminine was gathered 
 together in the absorbing discussion of 
 milliners' deeds and misdeeds, whereby Mr. 
 Oscar Dale, who happened to be seated at an 
 adjacent table, idly turning the leaves of an 
 album, acquired certain scraps of information 
 more mysterious than edifying. For instance, 
 
 12—2
 
 180 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 overhearing it whispered that Miss Towle's 
 black alpaca had positively been " brought 
 home the other night piped with ivhite,'^ it 
 was to him as though one should say '' drunk 
 with wine," and henceforward he felt inclined 
 to look upon the dress in question as a dis- 
 grace to the society in which it moved. 
 
 Miss Oglevie, noticing Dale's isolation, took 
 occasion to detach herself for awhile from the 
 group of ladies with whom she had been in 
 converse, and moved to the table whereat he 
 sat. From time to time it chanced that she 
 had exchanged with him opinions on litera- 
 ture, new and old, and each had found the 
 other versed in books to a wider extent than 
 had been anticipated. Both were great 
 readers, catholic in their tastes, liberal in 
 their views. Margaret Oglevie, undoubtedly, 
 was the more earnest and single-minded, the 
 purer student of the two ; but Dale had that 
 precious natural love of letters which opens
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 181 
 
 to its possessor such abiding fellowship with 
 noble minds and gentle hearts as may become 
 the very salt of life. Save to a few, however, 
 he was not wont to make manifest how real 
 was his interest in authors and their works, 
 and only these few knew the genuine thought 
 and culture that underlay the assumed super- 
 ficiality and indifferentism of his ordinary 
 tone. Oscar Dale was certainly *'odd" in 
 many ways. He had a queer relish for giving 
 people false impressions of his character, and 
 often seemed as willing to be misunderstood 
 as others are anxious to avoid it. 
 
 Of Margaret Oglevie — " rare pale Mar- 
 garet," as Charles Eliot would call her — we 
 shall have much to say in the after-course of 
 our story ; but haply a word or two of in- 
 troduction now may not be misplaced. And 
 in mentioning Margaret, we are tempted to 
 put down our pen and give way to private 
 meditation. The thought of her comes back
 
 182 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 like a strain of music. In fancy she rises up 
 before us, with her clear, kind eyes — wont to 
 meet one's own with such frank interrogation 
 or appeal ! — her outstretched hand, the clasp 
 of which was more eloquent than another 
 woman's kiss ; her gently flowing garments 
 (soft harmonies of grey, white, and black, 
 making simplicity a grace, and ever pleasantly 
 recalling the old line, " My love in her attire 
 doth show her wit ") ; her happy gift of 
 humour, and her keen, sympathetic recogni- 
 tion of every *' best " in art, or Nature, or 
 humanity! Characters akin to Margaret 
 Oglevie's are not many in this world (what- 
 ever they may be in a more habitable one), 
 but such few as there are among us — women 
 large of heart and brain, full of pure thought 
 and generous impulse — have a power to stir 
 the souls of men to good beyond that of all 
 the priests in Christendom. 
 
 We have spoken of Mr. Oglevie as a
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 183 
 
 widower. His wife died whilst Margaret 
 was yet a mere child ; hence her education 
 had been somewhat exceptional. From the 
 first moment that she could read, her father's 
 library had been open to her, and hour after 
 hour would be spent by the grave dreamy- 
 eyed little girl on an upper step of the library 
 ladder, where, in cramped and precarious 
 attitudes, she would be found absorbed over 
 ponderous volumes, which the servants who 
 came to seek her sweepingly " dratted " as 
 " rubbidge," and which, to the bulk of con- 
 temporary childhood had probably only been 
 palatable as material for building them houses. 
 Books, thus, had been her earliest and closest 
 companions, wherefore the names and writings 
 of many a long-gone labourer at the " quaint 
 trade," became as familiar in her mouth as 
 household words. And this provoked 
 criticism. 
 
 *' Mr. Oglevie," Mrs. Towle had exclaimed,
 
 184 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 emphatically, as spokeswoman of the outraged 
 female mind of the neighbourhood, '' that 
 Maggie of yours ought to be looked after ! 
 The way she's suffered to waste her precious 
 time in idle and profane reading is most — 
 you'll excuse my saying so, but it's really 
 most deplorable. I've a daughter of my 
 own, Mr. Oglevie, and I know what's good 
 for her, and what isn't." 
 
 *' Just my case, Mrs. Towle." 
 
 " Look at these," continued the vicars wife, 
 turning to a pile of old poets and dramatists 
 which Margaret had that morning brought 
 together for special study. '' What do you 
 call these, pray ?" 
 
 " Elizabethans mostly, I believe," answered 
 the widower, eying them grimly, with the 
 air of an old acquaintance. 
 
 " Elizabethans, indeed ! Ah, well ! at her 
 age I do think one might have looked for 
 better things ; and I can only say, Mr.
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 185 
 
 Oglevie, that it wasn't such works as these I 
 used to read when 1 was a young girl !" 
 
 " No, ma'am ; I imagine not." 
 
 " What's to come of it all," continued the 
 lady, pointing the parasol of scorn at the 
 objectionable volumes, ''is more than I can 
 tell ! Paley was given us to read in my days, 
 Mr. Oglevie — to read, mark, learn, and 
 inwardly digest ; and Pollock's ' Course of 
 Time,' and Blair, and Young ; but as for your 
 Marleys and Cowlowes " 
 
 " Marlowes and Cowleys, madam." 
 
 " and Draytons and Drumm'onds ; 
 
 why, we never so much as heard of them 1" 
 
 This little dialogue, and sundry similar 
 ones, occurred when the unconscious subject 
 of discussion was some fifteen years old. 
 Ealph Oglevie (supported by his snuff-box) 
 heard the well-meant expostulation to its 
 end with a fair outward show of patience ; 
 but the course of Margaret's studies was by
 
 186 ELIOT TSE YOUNGER. 
 
 no means altered in consequence. The cus- 
 tomary governesses and tutors were duly pro- 
 vided her, but her real education was that 
 which she procured herself. 
 
 At the time the reader meets her she had 
 just passed her nineteenth birthday, having 
 recently returned from a three months' 
 wandering over the Continent, whither she 
 had gone with her father. She was a tall 
 slim, grey-eyed girl, with a certain sweet self- 
 possession and tact about her which made 
 people quite lose sight of the fact of her 
 youthfulness. 
 
 " She might be any age to hear her talk !" 
 quoth local young ladyhood, somewhat snap- 
 pishly ; for Margaret was not altogether 
 popular with her junior neighbours, being 
 too unconventionally free from prudery on 
 the one side, and from coquetry on the other, 
 to satisfy the representatives of either. 
 
 But to return. We are forgetting our 
 company.
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 187 
 
 " Are you looking at my album, Mr. Dale ?" 
 said Miss Oglevie, as she approached him, 
 " or have you been listening to Mrs. Towle on 
 milliners ? Isn't it sad ?" 
 
 '' Awful ! The everlasting unfitness of 
 things, as shown by Miss Bayley's blue serge 
 and Mrs. Cundy's grey tweed, is simply 
 appalling !" 
 
 " Do they trouble you very grievously, 
 Mr. Dale — the blue serge and grey tweed ?" 
 
 " Well, no ! Frankly, not very. Or 
 rather, not at all. Indeed, for the matter of 
 that, I might quote your Browning, and own, 
 ' I'd as lief that the blue were grey.' "| 
 
 " For shame ! I didn't think you'd [mis- 
 apply a beautiful line in that way. Don't you 
 like ' A Lover's Quarrel ?' " 
 
 " * A Lover's Quarrel ' — meaning the 
 poem ?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Yes. It winds up, though, as all lovers*^
 
 188 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 quarrels do. Amantiim irce, you know 
 
 *' Go on, Mr. Dale." 
 
 *' Amoris integratio est ; which is to say, 
 that if your true love slaps you on the one 
 cheek, you must turn her the other, and she'll 
 kiss it." 
 
 " Isn't that a good deal for so few words to 
 mean?" asked Margaret, humorously para- 
 phrasing to herself Alice's query to Humpty- 
 Dumpty, from " Through the Looking- 
 Glass." 
 
 But Dale recognised the quotation, and 
 promptly took it up. 
 
 ''When /use a phrase," said he, assuming 
 Humpty-Dumpty's tone of scorn, " I make it 
 mean just what I choose, / do — neither more 
 nor less 1" 
 
 They both smiled here, but Miss Towle, who 
 had regarded the tete-a-tete with a spirit of 
 growing impatience, and who had overlooked
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 18» 
 
 the latter sentences, mentally commented as 
 follows : 
 
 " Well, people call Maggie Oglevie so 
 wonderfully clever and all that, but if they 
 had heard how Mr. Dale snubbed her about 
 that Latin, they might alter their opinion, 
 perhaps. It served her just right. She 
 fancies she knows everything !" Etcetera, 
 etcetera. 
 
 Whence it got whispered abroad next day 
 that Miss Oglevie had actually attempted to 
 correct Mr. Dale, of Idlevvild, in a quotation 
 from Pliny the Elder — (thus such as loved 
 accuracy ; besides, by introducing the name 
 of Pliny the Elder there was added to poor 
 Margaret's original offence a vague contingent 
 suggestion of disrespect to age), and that Mr. 
 Dale thereupon had as good as told her she 
 didn't understand what she was talking about \ 
 Or, in the servant-maid's version (for, of 
 course, there was that, as well as one for
 
 190 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 drawing-room circulation), "be ups and tells 
 her that if she fancied she knew Latting 
 better than what he did, she was much mis- 
 took, and so she needn't deceive herself !" 
 
 All this, however, by the way. For the 
 time being, Miss Tovvle had but little leisure 
 to reflect on the sage conclusion to which her 
 charity had led her, for her thoughts, as 
 those of everyone with her, were unexpectedly 
 diverted by a piece of intelligence which pro- 
 mised food for scandal of a most piquant 
 nature. 
 
 The Hev. Paul Boddyman, Rector of 
 Hethercote, was announced in the drawing- 
 room of The Coppice ; and with him he brought 
 
 this news : 
 
 '' Miss Brooke, the governess at Draycott 
 Manor, had eloped ivith Ulric Muffle Drum- 
 mond ! ! /" 
 
 The ascertained particulars were briefly as 
 follows :
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 191 
 
 Early in the week prior to the rector's 
 announcement, young Drummond had betaken 
 him to town with the alleged purpose of 
 attending a sale at Tattersall's. In London 
 he had been met by Miss Bi'ooke, who, it 
 appeared, had assigned to her employer the 
 illness of a near relative as an excuse for an 
 indefinite leave of absence. 
 
 The lady and gentleman had been married 
 by special licence, and had then returned to 
 Norwich. Here young Drummond would 
 seem to have hired, in advance, a small house 
 for his wife's reception, he himself going 
 home to the paternal mansion. A week had 
 elapsed without discovery or confession, but 
 at the close of this interval, either by acci- 
 dent or design, the whole matter was 
 revealed. 
 
 A tremendous scene had ensued. Lady 
 Drummond, and at least one of her 
 daughters, had gone off into hysterics (thus
 
 192 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 evincing a proper feminine sense of meeting 
 an emergency) ; old Sir Hugo had taken to 
 his bed ; whilst his infatuated son had 
 straightway quitted the Hall, and was now 
 living, with the womam he had wedded, in 
 Norwich, 
 
 Some two hours or so after the reception 
 ot the foregoing news, Charles Eliot and 
 Oscar Dale were about seating: themselves at 
 dinner in a private room at the Regent Hotel. 
 The former gentleman had decided that it 
 was too late to return home to dine, and 
 hence the meal en gargon at Norwich, which, 
 to tell the truth, was not altogether unpre- 
 meditated on the part of Mrs. Eliot's 
 husband. 
 
 " As you observed (or was it Mrs. Towle ?), 
 it's a queer go — this elopement," said Mr. 
 Dale taking his seat at table. 
 
 " So runs the world away," murmured Mr. 
 Eliot, unfolding his napkin. **I always
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 193 
 
 thought that woman would make a fool of 
 
 some one." 
 
 "Well ! she's not chosen her raw material 
 badlj. Natural selection, I suppose. It's a 
 pretty good pick-up, too, for her, by Jove ! 
 Drummond's of age, isn't he ?" 
 " Just, I believe." 
 
 "And that unfortunate brother of his 
 can't last ?" 
 " No." 
 
 " Nor the old gentleman either, much 
 onger. Why, Eliot, she'll be My Lady before 
 the year's out !" 
 
 " Shouldn't wonder. Think she and her 
 mother-in-law will cotton ?" 
 
 " Of course ! Like the rival bulls in Virgil. 
 I'd give something really nice to see them 
 encounter." 
 
 " She's a deuced handsome woman." 
 
 " Mrs. Ulric ?" 
 
 VOL. J. 13
 
 194 ELIOT TRE YOUNGEB. 
 
 " Yes. I'm glad, though^ Draycott didn't 
 take her to wife." 
 
 " Draycott ! 'Twasn't possible, surely ?" 
 
 " Quite possible, my dear Dale. Indeed, I 
 rather suspect it was a narrow escape for us. 
 You don't know what a consummate egotist 
 that man is ! Family considerations would 
 have no weight whatever with him, if it 
 were a question of gratifying his personal 
 inclination. He'll be marrying his cook some 
 day, confound him !" 
 
 " A propos of family considerations ; did it 
 ever strike you that your Dick had got 
 smitten with Miss Brooke ' as was ' ?" 
 
 " Dick's an ass !" 
 
 " You're partial." 
 
 " Not at all. Did Dick ever talk to you 
 about her, then ?" 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! But I think the young 
 gentleman was hit, all the same." 
 
 " Well, well ! It was merely a boy's
 
 GOSSIP AND GOSSIPS. 195 
 
 fancy, I suppose. Most likely he has for- 
 gotten all about her by this time. On ne 
 revient jamais d la premiere aimee ; and, as a 
 rule, Dale, it's better to have loved and lost, 
 than loved and married. He'll be coming 
 home, you know, at the beginning of the 
 month, and then he can call and congratulate 
 her." 
 
 And, with this, the subject passed. 
 
 1 ^ '
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 '■' OH, DOTH NOT A MEETING LIKE THIS MAKE 
 
 AMENDS !" 
 
 KINITY term was over, and tlie 
 loDQ^ vacation beofun. Oxford was 
 empty, her halls deserted, and the 
 old city seemed older still by reason of all the 
 young life gone from out her gates. Through 
 shade and shine of the deep-hearted summer 
 days Alma Mater dozed peacefully and 
 profoundly, the while her truant children 
 (spirited away, at Pleasure's call, as com- 
 pletely as Hamelin's youngsters by the 
 Pied Piper) made holiday throughout the 
 land. Ah, those three golden months of 
 leisure and liberty, of sport and pastime, of
 
 A MEETING. 197 
 
 reading and romance, of fond dreaming and 
 Arcadian afternoons ! What delio-ht of 
 summer sweethearting was oars then ! What 
 bhss of long vacation loves, 
 
 " Born when the cuckoo changes tune, 
 Dead ere the apple's red is on it !" 
 
 We met Jones in Cheapside yesterday — 
 Jones, ihejidus Achates of our early years — 
 and we thought tenderly of the time when 
 we were boys (that is, Oxford men) together. 
 Jones was high-hatted and stiff- collared, alien 
 to the Jones, that prodigal of passion ! who 
 so wildly adored the market-gardener's 
 daughter in the days gone by. Tempora 
 mutantur ! Could we lean our head upon 
 his shirt-front (one of six, at 42s. the half- 
 dozen) and express the yearning that we felt ? 
 Hardly ! And had we done so, would our 
 yearning have found response ? " Narra' 
 yearn !" as the Americans say. We our- 
 selves are still the ever young, fresh, loved.
 
 ]98 ELIOT TSE YOUNGER. 
 
 and delicate wooer of yore. But Jones ? 
 Jones is "something in the City." 
 
 Dick Ehot was on his way home. And this 
 same home-coming after a first absence from 
 the parental roof (even though it may have 
 been one of a few months only) is a momentous 
 matter enough to the ordinary youngster. For 
 he has been out into the world, has mingled with 
 men, and has learnt many and strange things. 
 The spoils he has gathered are manifold, and all 
 his novel acquirements will be duly displayed 
 before the envious eyes of the less fortunate 
 youth of his neighbourhood. From the cut 
 of his garments to the growth of his vocabu- 
 lary, from the purchase of razors to his open 
 trafiSc in tobacco — every such point will be 
 made and scored in his favour. His return, 
 indeed, will be replete with small triumphs 
 over local stay-at-homes ; for when, my dear 
 madam, did stationary merit excite the 
 interest shown in a wanderer ? A fixed star 
 
 I
 
 A MEETING. 199 
 
 is well enough in its way, but which of you 
 will go slip out at eve to see it, as you will 
 the occasional and unaccustomed comet ? 
 
 Our hero, leaning back in the padded 
 carriage which bore him eastward from 
 London, was in an eager, agitated, but not 
 unpleasant frame of mind, and his brain was 
 busy with the thought of coming meetings, 
 of coming conversations (which he had 
 mentally rehearsed a hundred times), of 
 coming pleasures and exploits. Above all, 
 he should see his Lydia once again ! 
 
 *-'0h, Lydia, Lydia!" murmured the lad, 
 tremulously" (he was alone in his compart- 
 ment), " how I love, how I long for you !' 
 And then he began to repeat aloud some of the 
 many glowing verses which he had recently 
 written in her praise, breaking off suddenly to 
 press his lips against the chance periodical in 
 his hand (the current number o? Punch) by way 
 of outlet to the superfluous fervour of his
 
 200 ELIOT TRE YO UNGER. 
 
 feelings. (Nemo mortalium, etc., and most of 
 us, probably, have played such fantastic tricks 
 before high heaven in our salad days or since.) 
 A familiar proverb, the general truth of 
 which may, perhaps, be open to dispute, 
 asserts that the effect of absence is to make 
 the heart grow fonder. Dick Eliot's heart, 
 at all events, had grown very fond indeed. 
 An ardent, unchecked imagination had found 
 abundant food in retrospect during the dozen 
 or so weeks he had passed at Oxford, and 
 ever and anon it had been stimulated by the 
 letters with which Miss Brooke had favoured 
 her boy-lover. The last of these precious 
 epistles, it is true, was a full month old ; but, 
 although this had caused him certain 
 moments of jealous misgiving and impatience, 
 he now looked confidently forward to the 
 near meeting with his mistress to clear away 
 all clouds, and to let shine once more the 
 unchequered sunlight of love.
 
 A MEETING. 201 
 
 How often since they parted had he 
 dreamt of this meeting, whereof the thresh- 
 hold at length was gained ! In warm May 
 evenings, as he drifted down stream with idle 
 oars, and saw the madcap midges, heralds of 
 heat, a -quiver above the towing-path ; 
 through the odorous darkness of June nights; 
 in the loitering noontides, drowsy with bees ; 
 in class-room and chapel ; and even amid the 
 bacchanalian Babel of college " wines," when, 
 through the eddying smoke-mist of flushed 
 faces there would rise up a vision of his 
 lady's ripe brunette beauty — 
 
 " On her neck the small face buoyant, 
 Like a bell-flower on its bed, 
 O'er the breast's superb abundance, 
 Where a man might base his head." 
 
 Dick had left London by a late afternoon 
 train (having spent the previous night in 
 town with fellow-collegians), and he was not 
 due at Norwich until past ten. Arrived
 
 202 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 here, his intention was to stop at the Regent 
 until the following morning, when he could 
 proceed to Hethercote at as early an hour as 
 might be most convenient. To have con- 
 tinued his journey without thus breaking it 
 would have necessitated the hire of some 
 private conveyance ; and, since his return 
 was not looked for until the morow, this 
 seemed scarcely worth the while. 
 
 By what of late has come to be considered 
 a railway accident — namely, the arriving 
 safely at one's terminus — our hero found him- 
 self in Norwich, sain et sauf, shortly after 
 ten o'clock. The night w^as hot and breath- 
 less ; a night when warm-blooded animals, 
 such as young men and maids, appeared un- 
 willing to betake them to their beds, rather 
 preferring to linger outdoors in the dusk 
 with bat, and moth, and other twilight- 
 loving things. Along the riverside, and 
 even on the river itself, people were thus
 
 A MEETING. 20a 
 
 lingering as Dick Eliot's cab crossed the 
 bridge that spanned its dark waters. A 
 subdued murmur of voices, broken now and 
 again by a snatch of song or the hght laugh 
 of a girl, floated upward through the sultry 
 air, wandering lazily by until the sound was 
 lost, and only the fragrance of the lindens 
 remained. In the city everything was un- 
 wontedly quiet. Norwich is given up to 
 gardens, both within and without her gates, 
 and the good folk were mostly enjoying 
 themselves, after a tranquil fashion, amid 
 their beloved bowers and privet-hedges, the 
 elders placidly discussing trade and weather 
 prospects, whilst their juniors strolled about 
 the dim, scented paths, and talked the idle 
 talk of youth. 
 
 Unable, in the over-active state of hia 
 nerves, to rest in his hotel, Dick Eliot had no 
 sooner made the requisite arrangements for 
 the night, than he issued forth once more^
 
 204 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 sauntering leisurely through the deserted 
 streets, hands in pockets and cigar in mouth. 
 Presently he came to the brilliantly lit swing- 
 doors of a public bar, and herein, impatient of 
 the brooding outer quiet, he entered. The 
 proprietor of the place, a bulky, red-faced 
 man, coatless and collarless, was serving a 
 soldier and two women with a compound of 
 gin-and-beer ("dog-nose") at one end of the 
 counter ; whilst a showily attired barmaid 
 awaited custom at the other. To her Dick 
 addressed himself. 
 
 " Some soda-and-brandy, please." 
 
 " Soda-and-brandy ? Yes, sir. Very 'ot 
 this evening !" 
 
 " Very." 
 
 " Pleasant outside, though, I dare say." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " A-many people walking, no doubt ; and 
 I don't blame 'em neither. I s'pose you've 
 been taking your stroll round, sir ?"
 
 A MEETING. 205 
 
 '' No ; I've just come in by train." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Been beautiful by the sea, 
 to-day, I should think T 
 
 " Eh ? I've not come from Yarmouth^ — 
 from London. Oxford yesterday." 
 
 " Ah, I thought you was a stranger. We 
 had an Oxford gentleman here last week. 
 He comes in (as it might be you), and the 
 way he carried on was most awful ! ' Miss 
 Mingay,' he says ; (and how he ever found 
 out my name, goodness only can tell !) ' Miss 
 Mingay, I adore you ! If you know what a 
 clime is — a ftir- off clime,' he says, 'and where 
 there's one handy, we'll fly to it !' I told 
 him plainly to his face that he wouldn't get 
 any flying or climbing out of me, and so he 
 needn't expect it. Then he wanted to know 
 if I was engaged to any one else. Did you 
 ever ! The idear !" 
 
 Dick, in the fulness of his heart, had all 
 day been feeling a persistent craving for
 
 ^06 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 some sort of companionship, some human 
 sympathy, some fellow-creature to whom he 
 could hint, however vaguely, the emotional 
 crisis at which he had arrived ; and now it 
 seemed that an opportunity had come to him. 
 The barmaid was not a lady, it is true ; but 
 then she was a woman, youthful, kindly, and 
 well-favoured. No further intruders had ap- 
 peared in the place, and the soldier and his 
 companions were w^iolly given over to their 
 " doo--nose." Dick drank some of his soda- 
 and-brandy, leant his arms upon the counter, 
 and began to speak." 
 
 " He asked if you were engaged, did he T 
 
 " Yes, that he did !" 
 
 *' And what did you answer V 
 
 " I said ' That's telling !' " 
 
 " I beg pardon V 
 
 " I said, ' That's telling !' " 
 
 " I see," said Dick, slowly withdrawing his 
 arms from the counter, and applying himself
 
 A MEETING. 207 
 
 anew to his refreshment. Then, after a 
 slight hesitation, he resumed his original 
 posture. 
 
 " Would you take me to be engaged ?" 
 
 The girl paused midway in pouring some 
 fresh water into a jug, looked quickly round 
 at him, and smiled. 
 
 " Are you, really ?" 
 
 Dick nodded. 
 
 " You're very young, ain't you ?" 
 
 '* I'm eighteen — pretty nearly." 
 
 " And I'm twenty. Two years the better 
 of you — or the worse." Here she sighed. 
 
 It is a fact that there is no fool like an old 
 fool ; but, on the other hand, it is equally 
 true that there is none like a young one. 
 The folly of age has the advantage of such 
 experience as may have failed to make a 
 given fool wise ; but then, in point of capital 
 unwasted by the expenditure of years, the 
 folly of youth finds compensation. It were
 
 208 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 doubtless irrational of our hero to be in love 
 at all ; but that he should have ever told 
 his love — should publish it gratuitously, seri- 
 ously, as a thing to be proud of — argues an 
 unwisdom at which we sage seniors may 
 fairly lose patience. A woman, however, will 
 always listen to a love-story, and age cannot 
 wither, nor custom stale, her interest in the 
 recital. Dick Eliot did not, perhaps, reveal 
 the history of his young affections without 
 reservation, definitely and directly, but he 
 let fall such sufficiency of fragmentary detail 
 as enabled his sympathetic auditor to piece 
 together what, to her mind, was a romance of 
 especial interest. For she too could echo the 
 poet's cry : 
 
 " Ich habe genossen das irdische gluck, 
 Ich habe geleht und geliehet !" 
 
 And a fellow-fellinof made her wondrous kind. 
 Wherefore it befell that Dick in turn became 
 recipient of manifold hintings and half-veiled
 
 A MEETING. 209 
 
 confessions anent a certain shadowy young 
 tobacconist, of fascinating person, but alas ! 
 dubious fidelity; and presently he found him- 
 self dealing out across the counter consoling 
 generalities as to ultimate constancy and the 
 like, for the benefit of the desponding damsel, 
 who (with unconscious significance) was ab- 
 stractedly turning on the taps of the ardent 
 spirits she had charge of. 
 
 If it be true that when fools meet the 
 devil goes to dinner, then at least the Evil 
 One had fair opportunity of breaking fast 
 on occasion of the interview we have just 
 recorded, supposing humanity not to have 
 given him excuse for dining earlier in the 
 day. Dick Eliot, strong in the assurance of 
 his own heart-happiness, was moved to com- 
 passion at the suggestion of the untoward 
 course of another's love. Being so blissfully 
 endowed, he could well be generous ; and, in 
 takinof leave of tha forlorn barmaiden, he 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 extended her his hand in token of the sym- 
 pathy he felt. Nor could he but be conscious 
 of a certain self-complacency in contrasting 
 his own gracious fortune with the ill chance 
 of the young person he was quitting. 
 
 Twelve ! The strokes of midnight were 
 travelling slowly over the City housetops 
 as our hero reappeared in the street, warn- 
 ing the late abroad to hie them to their 
 homes, speeding the parting guest, and cut- 
 ting short the lengthened sweetness of lovers' 
 last good-nights. Dick was perversely indis- 
 posed for bed, and rather chose to prolong 
 his stroll in company of the rabble of fond 
 fancies that were singing through his brain. 
 
 But there was other and more audible 
 singing going on in the neighbourhood at 
 this moment ; singing of a very earthly and 
 material sort, somewhat akin, indeed, to 
 Stephano's drunken strains when first we 
 meet him on the enchanted isle. For this,
 
 A MEETING. 211 
 
 too, was the voice of a toper, and of one, 
 moreover, far advanced in liquor. Dick 
 listened. The song was sentimental — an 
 ominous sign ! — and not convivial ; it seemed, 
 too, mainly consisting of chorus. 
 
 " Goo'-bye, sweetheart, go-o-od-bye !" sang, 
 or rather shouted, the voice ; and presently 
 round the corner came the singer himself. 
 
 Keeling in his gait, with glazed eyes and 
 disordered dress, the man made his way 
 toward the spot where Dick Eliot had just 
 paused, looking neither to right nor left, but 
 blundering stupidly forward after the incom- 
 petent fashion of the owl at noon. And still 
 he sang : 
 
 " Goo'-bye, sweetheart, go-o-od-bye !" until, 
 with a lurch and a hiccough, he staggered 
 almost into his auditor's arms. 
 
 " Goo'-bye, sweet — hullo, gov'ner ! where 
 ye driving to ?" 
 
 The light of a near lamp fell upon his 
 
 14—2
 
 212 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 face, and Dick started back in astonishment. 
 It was Ulric Drummond I 
 
 " Drummond !" 
 
 " Hay ! Tha's my na What ! EUot ! 
 
 S'help me, here's Eliot ! How are ye, Eliot ? 
 A'right ? Eliot, my boy, I'm drunk — as a 
 wheelb-rer, old pal — and no mistake about it! 
 "Wasaclock ?" 
 
 " Where in the world have you been, 
 Drummond ?" 
 
 " Been ? Been out, o'course ! Where 
 should I been, hey ? Been to supper — crick't 
 club. Wasaclock ?" 
 
 " But I say, Drummond 1 Where are you 
 off to now ? To the Eegent ?" 
 
 " Eegent be hanged ! I'm going home, I 
 am. ' Goo'-bye, sweetheart, go-o-od-bye !' 
 Come 'long, Eliot ; lesgo'home !" 
 
 " Nonsense, Drummond ! We can't get to 
 Hethercote to-night. Better by half come to 
 the Eegent with me. Will you ?"
 
 A MEETINQ. 213 
 
 " D the Regent, I say ! Don't I keep 
 
 telling you I live here now ? I'm gonome 
 — t'my wife, b'Jove ! Married man, you 
 know, an' that sorrerthing. Wasaclock ?" 
 
 " Here 1 hold up, Drummond ! Take my 
 arm, and then I'll see you wherever you like. 
 I wish to Heaven there was a cab about !" 
 
 ** Cab be bio wed ! Not ten min't's walk, I 
 tell you. Come 'long, Eliot, an' we'll have 
 a quiet glass o' grog together at home. 
 Glassagrog an' a song, b'Jove ! ' Goo'-bye, 
 sweetheart, goo-od-bye !' Talk t' my wife, 
 too — old fren', you know, an' all that, hey !" 
 
 To this tipsy, half-intelligible maunder- 
 ing Dick paid bat little heed. His attention 
 was chiefly engrossed in aiding his companion 
 in preserving his balance, and in giving a 
 definite direction to his steps. He felt no 
 small disgust at the society in which he found 
 himself, but Drummond's condition was such 
 that he could not well abandon him until
 
 214 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 he was safely housed. And, muddled as the 
 man was, he had evidently some haven or 
 other in view toward which he was disposed 
 to steer : hence our hero deemed it advisable 
 to let him have his way so far as was com- 
 patible with a due observance of the perpen- 
 dicular. Stumbling alike in speech and 
 motion, Ulric Drummond pursued his course, 
 supported by Dick Eliot, from the market- 
 place into Theatre Street, and so on toward 
 the species of square beyond known as Chapel 
 Field. 
 
 " Nearly home, now, old cock ! And, I 
 say, Eliot 1 do I look screw'd, hey ? Nev' 
 mind ! No matter ! You talk t' Mrs. D., 
 you know, an' it'll be a' right. E-eg'lar lark, 
 hey '?" 
 
 " Who's Mrs. D. ? Landlady !" 
 
 " 'Course she's a lady I What d'ye mean ?" 
 
 " Oh, all right, all right 1 Which is the 
 house — this ? Where's your key !"
 
 A MEETING. 215 
 
 After some delay in searching, the latch- 
 key was produced, and, softly ascending the 
 steps, Dick applied it to the door. 
 
 " Steady, Drummond ! Mind how yoa 
 come ! Can you find your way in alone, do 
 you think, or shall I go with you V 
 
 " A'right ! Come in, old boy, come in ! 
 Don't be afraid — we're all alone, me an' the 
 missis, you know." 
 
 Dick's thoughts reverted anew to a pro- 
 bable landlady, and he hesitated. Under 
 the circumstances, he had no inclination to 
 encounter a stranger, and it was only on 
 considering the expedience of seeing his in- 
 capable companion fairly disposed of for the 
 night, that he decided to run the risk. 
 Gently opening the door, therefore, he ad- 
 mitted Drummond into the dark hall-passage, 
 taking care to follow closely at his heels. 
 All was silent throuo-liout the house, the 
 atmosphere of wliich had a musty suggestion
 
 216 , ELIOT THE YOUNGEF. 
 
 cf stair-carpets and wearing apparel, and 
 seemed close and oppressive to one coming 
 from without. The sole thing hinting at any- 
 wakeful human presence was a narrow gleam 
 of light from a door on the left ; and toward 
 this light Drummond, with Dick behind him, 
 groped his way. A few short steps brought 
 them to the threshold of the chamber from 
 whence it proceeded. 
 
 At a first glance the room appeared to 
 Dick to be untenanted, but almost immedi- 
 ately after he became aware of the figure of 
 a woman reclining in a low chair at the 
 further end of the apartment, and apparently 
 asleep. At this moment Drummond stumbled 
 against a small footstool, knocking it noisily 
 over, and abruptly arousing the sleeper. 
 
 " A'right, my dear ; it's a' right ! Brought 
 an old fren' t'see you. Rec'lect Eliot, hey T 
 
 The woman rose suddenly to her feet, and 
 at the same instant our hero started forward.
 
 A MEETING. ' 217 
 
 with flushed face and bewildered stare, into 
 the full light of the lamp. 
 
 '' LydiaP' 
 
 *' Hay ?" said Drummond, looking from one 
 to the other with a tipsy air of inquiry* 
 " Wasamatter '? My wife, Eliot." 
 
 " Your ivife f Oh, it's a lie, a lie !" burst 
 out Dick, passionately, the colour fading from 
 his cheeks and leaving him white and tremb- 
 ling. " Lydia, speah ! What does it mean, 
 what does it mean ? It cant be true." 
 
 Lydia Drummond faltered. She had not 
 been prepared for such an encounter as this : 
 it was awkward and disconcerting to a degree. 
 In anticipating a possible meeting and ex- 
 planation with Dick Eliot, she had presup- 
 posed a host of minor incidents ; a succession 
 of favourable preliminaries, to smoothen and 
 palliate the fact of her marriage. At least 
 he would have heard all about it before they 
 came affain tofjether — would have o^ot over
 
 218 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 the first shock — and probably a letter or two 
 might have passed between them. But to be 
 brought thus face to face, without word or 
 warning, and with no available plea or 
 sophistry to interpose between herself and 
 the bare truth, was distracting, provoking 
 beyond all things 1 If only she could gain 
 time, could get a hearing ! For a moment 
 she looked at the two young men before her 
 — at the coarse, drink-inflamed face of the 
 one, at the pale and haggard features of the 
 other — and then she spoke, 
 
 " Mr. Eliot !— I thought you knew ? I 
 thought " 
 
 " It's — it's true, then V broke in Dick, 
 fiercely, speaking in strange, harsh accents, 
 and gazing at her with wild eyes. " You've 
 married !" 
 
 *' 'Course she has ! What d'ye mean ? 
 Sit down an' le'sdrinkerelth, old boy ! I say 
 sit "
 
 A MEETING. 219 
 
 " Leave hold ! Let me go !" 
 
 " Sit dow " 
 
 " Let me go !" cried Dick, with suppressed 
 fury. Then suddenly, as the other still held 
 him by the arm, his rage, grief, and bitter 
 disappointment broke loose like a torrent, 
 and his voice rose to a shriek. '' Curse you!" 
 he screamed. '' You fool, you fool ; let go !" 
 And, with a wrench, he sent Drummond 
 staggering violently from him, and rushed 
 blindly out into the darkness. 
 
 It was briofht mornino^ when Dick Eliot 
 returned to the Kegent, a dusty, dishevelled 
 youngster, with face pale, worn, and altered. 
 How and where he had spent the intervening 
 hours he was never quite able to recall. All 
 the nio;ht throusfh he would seem to have 
 wandered to and fro like an unquiet spirit, 
 seekinof rest and findinof none. He remem- 
 bered being by the river-side, and also lying 
 down on a bench by some boathouse, watching
 
 220 ELIOT TEE YOUNGEE. 
 
 the dark monotonous flow of the water, and 
 hearing it lapping against the bank as it 
 passed. He recollected, too, that a barge 
 went by as he lay there ; that a dog barked 
 at him from it, and that a man's voice swore 
 at the animal angrily. He felt dazed and 
 stupefied, and an endless iteration of Drum- 
 mond's tipsy chorus, " Good - bye, sweet- 
 heart !" went on in his brain with dreary 
 persistence, like the dull ticking of a clock 
 or the mufiled ring of bells. At earliest 
 dawn the birds began to pipe and whistle 
 around him, and soon people were moving 
 abroad to their day's labour. He was con- 
 scious that he attracted attention as he 
 pursued his aimless way; but this he scarcely 
 heeded, until at last a young, bright-looking 
 woman stopped to ask if he were ill, when 
 the tears rose hotly to his eyes, and he turned 
 hurriedly away to seek shelter from ob- 
 servance.
 
 A MEETING. 221 
 
 The respectable, bald-headed waiter, who 
 remarked our hero's re-entrance into the 
 E-egent, wrinkled his brow meditatively at 
 the appearance he presented, methodically 
 charging it to the errors and excesses of 
 youth, as though putting down a recognised 
 item to a customer's account. " Hah ! just so ! 
 Mixeddrinks and hate'npenny loo ; two trumps, 
 lead the 'ighest ; hafter trick a trump. / 
 know, bless yer !" And he concluded to call 
 the young gentleman, sleeping in No. 5, at 
 some late hour in the afternoon, having an 
 extra strong cup of tea in readiness for him 
 in the coffee-room. 
 
 Beaching the chamber allotted him, Dick 
 flung himself down, all dressed as he was, 
 upon the bed, utterly wretched and ex- 
 hausted, his limbs aching, his head throbbing, 
 his heart burning. Hours went by, and 
 still he lay there, thinking, thinking, yet 
 striving and battlino- all the while ao-ainst
 
 222 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 thought, recoiling from it, and turning to a 
 dozen different objects in order to postpone 
 the full realisation of what at present seemed 
 but as a brooding cloud and heaviness upon 
 his brain. He heard the city clocks noising 
 abroad their chimes at midday, and an in- 
 terval of weeks almost appeared to him to 
 have elapsed since last he had listened to the 
 strokes of twelve from these same church- 
 towers. By-and-by he rose from the bed, 
 and looked about him confusedly for water. 
 It was not very fresh or cool when found ; 
 but he felt parched and feverish, and swallowed 
 it eagerly. Turning toward the bed again, 
 his eyes caught the reflection of his face in 
 the glass above the mantelshelf Its ghostly, 
 woe-begone aspect drew him to closer in- 
 spection, and a rush of youthful self-pity 
 surged up from his heart as he looked. 
 With a sudden access of despair, he clasped 
 his hands passionately across his brow, sink-
 
 A MEETING. 223 
 
 ing down on his knees upon the hearth- 
 rug. 
 
 " Oh, my God, help me ! Lydia, Lydia t 
 Come back, Lydia ! come " 
 
 Silence reigned in No. 5. The slanting 
 rays of a July sun poured in at the window 
 of the hot little back chamber, throwino* 
 irregular patches of fierce light about the 
 stuffy red-and-green drugget. A curious 
 stillness was in the room, and in the narrow 
 stable-yard it overlooked. That kind of 
 " gritty calm and bake," of which Mrs. Lir- 
 riper speaks, had settled down upon the 
 breathless neighbourhood, and only the 
 melancholy sound of a distant barrel-organ 
 came at intervals over the housetops. From 
 some lower apartment of the hotel arose a 
 drowsy hum of voices, a faint occasional jingle 
 of glasses and plates ; but otherwise the 
 whole house seemed asleep. The flies buzzed
 
 -224 
 
 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 about the window-panes, the bland portraits 
 of two buried nobodies gazed with inflexible 
 smiles from the chamber walls, whilst the cut 
 paper in the grate, white and saw-toothed, 
 grinned through the cold black bars like a 
 skeleton.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 
 
 T is an awkward moment (as we, 
 who have 'experienced it can 
 testify) when first one finds out 
 that one's idol is made of mere clay, like 
 other people's, and sees the thing one has 
 worshipped and believed in lying shattered 
 at one's feet. All too well do we remember 
 the day that this discovery came home to us 
 — or, stay ! it was we who came home to the 
 discovery. Only, you see, we were fond and 
 foolish, and so stooped (0 ! purblindness of 
 puppyhood !) to pick up the pieces, and 
 sought — aye ! actually sought to put Humpty- 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 Dumpty tof^ether again. Eh hien ! We are 
 wiser now, and, when our fetish falls (as fall 
 it must !), we go and get a new one, as the 
 philosopher mentioned by Horace Walpole 
 was wont, on losing his friend, to call at 
 the St. James's Coffee House and take 
 another. 
 
 But, alas ! our youthful hero could not 
 thus console himself with " adversity's sweet 
 milk, philosophy " — which has, indeed, at no 
 time been milk for babes, but rather the 
 artificial nourishment of second childhood. 
 For Dick had loved, like the many, not 
 wisely, but like the few, too well ; and it 
 must be admitted that his young affections 
 were somewhat rudely nipped in the bud. 
 That they had been grievously misplaced is 
 undeniable ; but, unfortunately (as Byron 
 reminds us), human love is not the growth of 
 human will, and the natural selection of the 
 heart, in its unscientific search for a mate.
 
 CONVALHSCENCE. 227 
 
 tends to no Darwinian sequence in a Survival 
 
 of the Fittest. It is, therefore, perhaps, 
 
 hardly to be wondered that Dick Eliot 
 
 should have bestowed himself as our history 
 
 has recorded. The time was ripe for some 
 
 such bestowal when Miss Brooke appeared ; 
 
 having appeared, the result was a matter of 
 
 course. The woman tempted him, and he 
 
 did eat ; and if, by-and-by, the fruit disagreed 
 
 with him (as fruit so often does disagree with 
 
 folk), it affords us a wholesome warning 
 
 against the rash indulgence of appetite. 
 
 We have said that, though Dick did not 
 
 love wisely, he loved well. And this is true. 
 
 His passion for Lydia Brooke was wholly 
 
 genuine, his fancy fairly captivated. A 
 
 thousand nameless nothings had conspired 
 
 to bring this consummation to pass, each 
 
 tending to entangle him more deplorably. 
 
 The tie of a ribbon, the accent of a word, a 
 
 touch of the hand, a turn of the head — bah ! 
 
 15—2
 
 228 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 who can catalogue the causes of one's likes or 
 dislikes? We, ourselves, remember once being 
 desperately smitten with a certain spinster 
 lady, Miss Coiite-que-Coutts, the wealthy West 
 Indian orphan. She wasn't pretty, or clever, 
 or accomplished, or, indeed, obviously attrac- 
 tive in any way ; but there were we, follow- 
 ing her here, there, and everywhere, as though 
 she were a very Venus ! Of course there 
 must have been some charm about her — 
 but what 1 We give our word as a gentle- 
 man that we never could understand our 
 infatuation about the woman, nor the manner 
 in which our sainted mother was wont to 
 encourage it. Love is blind, you know; and 
 if this unprotected young female had faults, 
 we failed to perceive them. To us she was the 
 one object of existence — until she married 
 another — and then we saw what an object 
 she was ! 
 
 But to return to our hero. For a fort-
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 229 
 
 night he lay at the Regent, whither his father 
 and mother had been summoned by mine 
 host with all due promptness. So severe 
 was the mental shock he had encountered, 
 so sharp and sudden the strain, that it proved 
 sufficient to upset the balance of his brain. 
 During the ten days or so that his reason 
 suffered more or less eclipse, he naturally 
 talked a vast amount of nonsense. Snatches 
 of poetry (original and select) were inter- 
 mingled with fleeting allusions to past 
 escapades at Oxford, pathetic reminiscences 
 of school-days and childhood, of boyish 
 wrongs endured, of dim woes and misunder- 
 standings. The injury, the injustice we meet 
 with as children (be it real or imaginary), is 
 never wholly forgotten, seldom wholly forgiven; 
 and amid all the trials and afflictions of later 
 life, the memory of our first tangible grievance 
 remains, the sense of its ancient bitterness 
 re-awakens. And the ghosts of these early
 
 230 IJLIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 evils will haunt us when more recent and 
 much more serious vexations are resting 
 quietly in their graves. 
 
 As soon as he could safely be moved, 
 Dick was taken home to The Leas ; but, 
 with all the care bestowed on him, he seemed 
 slow in his recovery. Old Dr. Burleigh, the 
 family physician, appeared somewhat puzzled 
 about his patient, and, when cross-questioned 
 by Mrs. Eliot, took professional refuge in 
 the fastness of terms technical, which, if it 
 did not indicate fog in his own mind, at 
 least produced it in other people's. Nor did 
 Dick himself deem it well to throw any light 
 upon the main cause of his malady. Of his 
 untoward meeting with the Drummonds 
 nothing was known save to the three persons 
 immediately concerned ; for our hero main- 
 tained an obstinate silence as to his adven- 
 tures on the eventful night which preceded 
 his prostration, tacitly declining to refer to 
 
 i
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 231 
 
 them in any way. Conjecture (for the time 
 being) was rife, but inquiry was not pressed ; 
 and no one ever dreamed of connecting his 
 illness with the fact of Lydia Brooke's 
 marriage. Charles Eliot, surmising at all 
 possible scrapes and follies of unmuzzled 
 youth, delicately invited his son's confidence, 
 but seeing that none was readily forthcoming, 
 he generously forbore interrogation. 
 
 '' Take my word for it. Dale, the lad's 
 love-sick I He's suffering from an aggra- 
 vated attack of Oxford milliner, or a fit of 
 porter's daughter, or something of that sort. 
 I used to be a martyr to that kind of thing 
 myself when I was his age — didn't you ?" 
 
 Mr. Dale yawned. '' Don't recollect, I'm 
 sure. Aunt Dorothy kept a list of my juvenile 
 ailments, I believe ; she can tell you what I 
 went through, no doubt." 
 
 " Ah ; you evidently escaped more easily 
 than I did. Youth was one perpetual fever
 
 2S2 
 
 ELIOT THE YOU^aER. 
 
 with me — now high, now ]ovv — and my heart 
 was as inflammable as the cargo of an emigrant 
 ship." 
 
 " Poor child !" laughed Dale. " You must 
 have been as bad, I should think, as Chaucer's 
 lusty bachelor — 
 
 * So bote lie lovede, that by nightertale, 
 He slept no more than doth a nightyngale.' " 
 
 ''Me to a T," said Mr. Eliot. "But 
 here's my wife. AHcia, my dear, what's 
 the meaning of the word ' nightertale ?' " 
 
 It was mid-August before our hero was 
 fairly on his feet again — a listless-looking 
 biped, haunting the woods and fields, or 
 wandering off to the lone sea-beach, where 
 he would lie and watch the flickering blue 
 monotony of water through half a summer 
 day. He consumed a considerable quantity 
 of verse at this period (chiefly Byronic in its 
 tone), and he wrote a long unhappy poem 
 which suggested, inter alia, that he had
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 23a 
 
 recently been reading " Locksley Hali." 
 This effusion was charged with the most 
 uncompromising misanthropy, with the finest 
 scorn in the finest writing ; a Stygian gloom 
 overshadowed its doleful numbers, and it 
 spoke of woman as though, unlike her 
 original tempter, she were really as black as 
 she is painted. 
 
 However, it is not our intention to dwell 
 upon the successive stages of Dick's dis- 
 appointment, nor to give in detail the various 
 symptoms that developed themselves. Calf- 
 love, either when crowned or crossed, is 
 undoubtedly apt to seem insipid to the 
 matured taste ; and, indeed, there are those 
 who object to the dishing-up of veal in any 
 form. Besides, the ground has already been 
 gone over by Thackeray, in his history of 
 Arthur Pendennis, with such wonderful 
 humour and perception, that one may well 
 hesitate to attempt reiteration.
 
 234 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 And here we would say a word on our own 
 behalf. It may possibly strike the acute 
 critic (that dreadfully clever detective, who 
 but yesterday proved poor Tom Crib's new 
 and original comedy to be plagiarised from 
 the Arabic of Aphra Ben Jonson) that the 
 outline of our humble narrative, as far as it 
 goes, is by no means unlike that of the novel 
 of the great master we have just referred to. 
 Pen, in his teens, falls a victim to Miss 
 Costigan, as does our Dick to Miss Brooke ; 
 and it is probable that there ai^e manifold 
 points of damning similarity in the rise and 
 fall of their respective passions. We can 
 only say, in extenuation, that history repeats 
 itself Our fiction is fact ; and we would 
 ask the experienced reader if he has ever 
 reflected in how many instances the early 
 life of a young man might have been built, 
 so to speak, on the " lines " of that of 
 Thackeray's unheroic hero ? For ourselves.
 
 CONVALESCENCE, 235 
 
 we do but utter that which we do know ; 
 and if, as is only too likely, our dramatis 
 personce appear puppets, their speech incon- 
 sistent, their actions improbable, it must 
 simply be ascribed to deficiency of art on our 
 part as chronicler. 1 
 
 Dick Eliot, then, having got the better of 
 his physical hurt, passed through sundry 
 phases of mental unhealthiness, which as- 
 suredly left their mark upon his character. 
 For his fever begat dejection, and dejection 
 begat moodiness, and moodiness begat resent- 
 ment, and resentment begat a sort of reckless 
 antagonism to the wholesome decencies and 
 respectabilities of life that fence us off from 
 the surrounding wild. An evil spirit of 
 unrest and defiance took hold upon him — a 
 spirit that evinced itself in manifold ways. 
 He smoked considerably more than was good 
 for him ; turned his steps to the neighbouring 
 city of Norwich with an ever-increasing
 
 236 ' JELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 frequency, spending his hours in bilUard- 
 rooms and bar-parlours with a succession of 
 indifferent acquaintances — idle, foolish young- 
 sters, like himself, and the three or four godless 
 seniors they deferred to as Mentors. In short, 
 he went on "anyhow" (as latter-day slang 
 expresses it), sowing his first crop of wild oats 
 — alas ! the enemy sowing tares! — and learn- 
 ing all too early such lessons of that unholy 
 trinity, the world, the flesh, and the devil, as 
 tend to the completion of man's education. 
 
 Thus the long vacation passed by — not in 
 the intoxicating glow and glamour poor Dick 
 had fondly anticipated, but in disappoint- 
 ment and bitterness and rebellion of heart. 
 Nothing of any special import occurred from 
 the beginning until the end of his holiday, 
 when Mr. Oscar Dale got up a picnic, as a 
 sort of farewell entertainment for his young 
 friend, inviting to Idlewild, amongst others. 
 Miss Ogle vie and her father.
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 237 
 
 " You remember Margaret Oglevie, do you 
 not, Dick T asked Mrs. Eliot ; " although it 
 must be some years now since you met her. 
 I dare say you will find her much altered. 
 She was always a little strange, even as 
 a child ; but I think she has improved of 
 late." 
 
 " I remember her," said Dick, " But it 
 must be quite four summers ago since last 
 she spent a day here when I was at home. 
 She was fond of listening to the rooks, and 
 used to say that some of them were probably 
 a hundred years old, and knew my great- 
 grandmother when she was a girl. And 
 she wondered what kind of a girl my great- 
 grandmother had been, and seemed surprised 
 I had never done so too. And I recollect 
 she asked me if I didn't think our plantation 
 was like the Wood of Error, where Una and 
 the Knight went; or whether I fancied it 
 the one that Comus lived in ? I told her I
 
 238 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 didn't know who Comus was, and she said 
 I evidently didn't know much, then ! And 
 she wanted to hear what books I read most, 
 and who my favourite heroes were. I wonder 
 if I should recognise her again ! What is 
 she like now ?" 
 
 " She's grown rather a tall girl," said Mrs. 
 Eliot ; " and she dresses, I must say, some- 
 what oddly. Those blacks and greys and 
 whites of hers are inoffensive enoucjh in one 
 sense, no doubt ; but I always hold it well 
 for a young woman to pay due respect to the 
 prevailing fashion, and to avoid anything like 
 singularity. Now those hats she wears '* 
 
 " My dear," interposed Mr. Eliot, mildly, 
 " you are describing her clothes, not herself. 
 I suppose, though, that's the natural feminine 
 wont. I wonder how Lilith described Eve, 
 who had no garments to be criticised. 
 Found fault with the way she did her hair, 
 perhaps V
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 239 
 
 " Possibly, Charles, you or Mr. Dale would 
 be better at giving Miss Oglevie's portrait. 
 Will you not favour us, Mr. Dale T 
 
 " I, ray dear Mrs. Eliot ! Worst hand ia 
 the world at description. The most I could 
 do would be to give an inventory of her, 
 a^fter Olivia's fashion, in Tivelfth Night — ' as, 
 item, two lips, indifferent red ; item, two 
 grey eyes, with lids to them ; item, one neck, 
 one chin, and so forth.' No ; Dick must 
 wait till Thursday, and then he'll see the 
 young lady ia person. Better read up for 
 her, Dick, meanwhile, or you'll never 
 pass." 
 
 Thursday came — a day silent and sweet, 
 in the late September, when all outdoor 
 sound had grown sleepy, and the thin mist 
 of autumn made the distance a dream. 
 Summer had left the land, and the swallows 
 had flown after her. Flowers, like elder 
 sisters whose season was over, were reluctantly
 
 240 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 giving place to fresh-cheeked fruits, and the 
 glories of gardens and fields were gradually 
 yielding to the ruddier beauties of orchards 
 and woods. 
 
 Cottage children, bronzed by the sun, 
 might now be met in troops, with blackberry- 
 stained mouths, and faces smeared with 
 purple, looking like wild Indians in their 
 war-paint. The hushed woods, no longer, as 
 in mid- August, *' green-dense and dim- 
 delicious," were possessed by an odorous 
 twilight, in which the subtle fragrance of the 
 pine, the faint, cool smell of moss and fern, 
 and the ancient earthy savour of fallen 
 leaves, penetrated the brain with their 
 mingled fumes, awaking a crowd of tender 
 memories and vague regrets as one lingered 
 amid the trees. 
 
 And the trees themselves ! The yellowing 
 poplar, a pale-flamed torch ; the maple, with 
 its fierce tropical flush of colour ; the tawney-
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 241 
 
 hued plane and sycamore ; the spotted 
 orange of the horse-chestnut ; and the 
 puritanical brown of oak and beech, which 
 stood up rebukefully among their livelier-clad 
 brethren, like Christian and Faithful among 
 the flaunting plumes and Babylonish doublets 
 of "Vanity Fair." 
 
 There was ample opportunity given this 
 day to note the varying splendours and 
 sadness of autumnal foliage, for at Idlewild 
 flourished a grand old wood, covering many a 
 broad acre of ground ; and it was part of its 
 owner's programme to have luncheon taken 
 within its leafy cloisters. A goodly sprink- 
 ling of county and city folk had responded to 
 the invitations of Oscar Dale, whose kins- 
 woman, Mrs. Allan Dale, of Little Upton, 
 willingly undertook the part of hostess to his 
 guests. 
 
 Mrs. Dale, indeed, was quite in her 
 element at this post, and did the honours of 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 Idlewild with the utmost afFability and self- 
 satisfaction. She was a glib-tongued, rather 
 pretty Httle woman, as harmless as was com- 
 patible with entire foolishness ; but since her 
 sister Theresa's marriao;e to old Lord St. 
 Bees she had become a somewhat monotonous 
 creature to converse with, saddling her 
 auditor with that venerable nobleman as re- 
 morselessly as Sindbad was saddled with the 
 Old Man of the Sea, and thrusting greatness 
 upon one in the person of my lady his wife^ 
 Lintil the burden grew beyond human 
 endurance. Better honest Allan, and his 
 shorthorns, with their pedigrees and prize- 
 winnings, than Mrs. Allan, with her inter- 
 minable chronicle of Belgravian small- 
 beer. 
 
 The Eliots, as near neighbours and friends, 
 were about the earliest arrivals, and found 
 their host and Mrs. Dale in what, in 
 Idlewild, was called the blue drawing-room.
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 243 
 
 The two ladies greeted each other with 
 effusion. Mrs. Dale mentally condemned 
 Mrs. Eliot's bonnet, and forthwith appealed 
 to her good taste on a question of mural 
 decoration. 
 
 " Do you know, Oscar intends having the 
 dining-room repainted. And, fancy, my dear 
 Mrs. Eliot ! he wants those dreadful split 
 things the Oglevies have — pomegranates, 
 are they not ? I'm sure I shall never enjoy 
 a dinner here again if he does have them. I 
 don't know how they affect you, but they 
 always make me yawn — they do, indeed ! 
 And it's so provoking ; because, of course, 
 they are not at all the right thing now — not 
 in the least I Dear Theresa writes me that 
 nothing has been seen this season but 
 chrysanthemums and storks ; walls, curtains, 
 carpets, chintzes, china — everywhere ! Isn't 
 it delightful ? Quite too original ! Last 
 year, you know, it was sunflowers and 
 
 16—2
 
 244 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 lizards ; and next year — Oh, Oscar ! what 
 did the Duchess tell Theresa was to be next 
 year V 
 
 " Ducks and green peas next year — sage- 
 green, of course," said Mr. Dale, gravely. 
 ** Or else what -do -you -call -'em ? — lambs ; 
 lambs and wild mint — whichever you happen 
 to like best. But I believe the ducks will be 
 the more correct ; especially as we are to 
 have them drawn like dodos. Nothing, you 
 know, can be quainter than that I Your 
 dodo is the most fearful wild-fowl living ; 
 and, combined with the peapods, I think 
 the effect will be charming. Don't you, 
 
 Eliot r 
 
 "Peapods are no end artistic," said Mr. 
 Eliot, sternly repressing his smile, and 
 speaking en connoisseur. " And that subtle 
 etherealising of ducks and peas into dodos 
 and pods is worthy of the true poet. If it 
 isn't calculated to strike terror in the
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 245 
 
 stoutest heart, and raise a blush on the 
 cheek of modesty, why, I don't know what 
 18 ! 
 
 *' My dear Charles, how very absurdly 
 you're talking I Fortunately, Mrs. Dale 
 knows what you are. Men complain of the 
 silliness of women, but really, the nonsense 
 they themselves often utter outdoes ours 
 altogether. Don't you think so, Mrs. 
 Dale r 
 
 " Oh, I do ! And there's no excuse for 
 men whatever ; because it isn't as though 
 their nonsense were unintentional, like ours ; 
 but they actually talk it on purpose ! And 
 that reminds me, dear Mrs. Eliot — have you 
 heard what Mr. Disraeli said the other day to 
 St. Bees ? No ! Ah, then " 
 
 " Pardon, me cousin," interposed Oscar 
 Dale, anxious to avert the threatened 
 torrent of small talk ; " but I fancy I see 
 the Ogle vies coming up the drive ; and
 
 246 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 there's someone else behind them. It must 
 be' later than we thoug^ht." 
 
 Presently, the Oglevies appeared ; and 
 closely in their wake came a succession of 
 guests — the Wyatts of Beechley, the Ariels 
 of Waste Court, the Pitts of Brookham, 
 Draycott of Draycott Manor, Polly Boddy- 
 man and the Bector, the Farrs, Nevilles, and 
 Ellinghams from Norwich — until the party 
 was found complete. There was an aimless 
 half-hour or so spent in lingering within the 
 house and about the lawn and garden, but at 
 length a start was made for the wood. Some 
 few of the ladies remained behind to be 
 conveyed with the luncheon in the 
 wagonette, but the majority preferred the 
 walk across the park. Just before setting off, 
 it chanced that Dick Eliot renewed his 
 acquaintance with Miss Ogle vie. And it 
 happened in this wise. 
 
 He was standing in the recess of one of
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 247 
 
 the drawing-room windows, looking out on the 
 lawn, when, through the hum of conversation 
 within, he heard a voice close behind, saying : 
 
 "It's like a poem of Keats'." 
 
 At this he turned, and saw a young lady 
 bending over a small bronze vase, having 
 figures of nymphs and satyrs winding round 
 it, and containing a cluster of faint creamy 
 roses with brown autumn ferns among them. 
 The tone of the voice was singularly clear 
 and thoughtful, and Dick felt that he should 
 like to hear it again. So when the speaker 
 looked up, he came forward a step from the 
 window. 
 
 '• Hah, Dick !" said Oscar Dale, who was 
 standing beside the young lady. "You 
 know Miss Oglevie, of course 1 Auld lang 
 syne — boys together, and all that weren't 
 you ? Excuse me, please, I must see about 
 getting my company off. It's like launching 
 a ship."
 
 248 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 And with this he left them. 
 
 "Is it really Eichard Eliot?" said Miss 
 Oglevie, holding out her hand to Dick with 
 a smile. " I'm so glad to meet you again. 
 It's a small age, you know, since I saw you 
 last ; but I remember that summer I used to 
 come over to The Leas, when you were home 
 from Rugby. And I've not forgotten the 
 rooks, or the rabbits, or anything. How's 
 
 Lop, M.P. r 
 " Lop, M.P. r 
 
 " Ah, you don't remember ! What a 
 shame ! Can't you recollect that delightfully 
 absurd story your father told us about your 
 rabbits ? About the big grey one, with ears 
 hanging down like the lappets of the 
 Speaker's wig — the one he called the member 
 for the burrow ? Why, it was almost a fore- 
 taste of ' Alice in Wonderland.' " 
 
 Dick didn't recollect at all, so he said, 
 vaguely :
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 24^ 
 
 " I think I remember something about it." 
 
 But Margaret Ogle vie saw through the 
 pretence directly, and characteristically de- 
 clined to tolerate it. 
 
 " I think you do nothing of the sort ! 
 Own frankly you've forgotten. Pray, what 
 did Lop, M.P., say when he was presented to 
 the Hare Apparent ? You see you don't 
 know ! Let's talk of somethino- else." 
 
 Dick was somewhat disconcerted at being 
 so promptly found out and fearlessly taxed 
 with his small deceit ; annoyed, too, with 
 himself — an Oxford man — for not feeling 
 more entirely at ease beneath the girl's clear 
 grey eyes. That freedom, that frankness of 
 speech of hers — why could not he also be 
 equally natural ? Doubtless she would think 
 him stiff and conventional — women were so 
 shallow in their judgment, so hasty in their 
 conclusions ; and if she did thus misinterpret 
 liim, he couldn't help it.
 
 250 ' ELIOT TBE YOUNGEB. 
 
 Such were Dick's inmost reflections as he 
 traversed the yet dewy slopes and rises of 
 the park at Miss Oglevie's side, whilst to 
 right and left, in straggling procession, their 
 fellow-pilgrims to the wood were making the 
 still September noontide glad with voices. 
 As for his companion, she was wholly 
 disposed to find pleasure in this renewal of 
 an early acquaintance. 
 
 Of late she had heard frequent mention of 
 our hero, alike from his father and from Mr. 
 Dale, and much that she had heard had 
 interested her. She was, moreover, a 
 creature of wide and ready sympathies, 
 taking a keen, unflagging relish in the study 
 of surrounding character, in the common 
 needs and aspirations, and toils, and triumphs 
 of everyday humanity. And if, as was often- 
 times inevitable, people fell miserably short 
 of the generous estimate she had formed of 
 them, jarring on her with meannesses, ignoble 
 
 II
 
 CONVALESCJE^SCE. 251 
 
 self-serving, and the pitiful lack of charity, 
 she was ever more apt to take reproach to 
 herself for misunderstanding and faulty 
 judgment than to condemn those who were 
 the real sinners. In which shifting of the 
 burden of blame she seldom missed the con- 
 currence and approval of the culprits them- 
 selves. 
 
 *' How deliciously quiet [and quieting this 
 wood is !" exclaimed Margaret, as they 
 entered within its shade. "To me there 
 seems such a sense of tender patience about 
 these autumn days, that makes their beauty 
 all the more beautiful." 
 
 " I like woods, and I like autumn," said 
 Dick, insensibly yielding to the dreamy 
 influences about him ; " and I like them both 
 together. This wood especially is a favourite 
 of mine ; so is that at Hethercote. As a 
 rule, I think I like places better than 
 people."
 
 252 ELIOI THE YOUNGER. 
 
 " Ah, that shows how young you are," 
 said Miss Oglevie, in a tone of such quiet 
 assurance, that^ although inwardly resenting 
 the statement, Dick could not help suspecting 
 there must be something in it. " Now, 
 Nature can never attract me as human 
 nature does ; so / prefer people to places." 
 
 ''Naboth to Naboth's vineyard, I suppose?" 
 said Dick, with a touch of sarcasm ; then, 
 gloomily (as though a cloud, letting forth a 
 momentary flash, should straightway resume 
 its natural sombreness), *' People are de- 
 ceitful." 
 
 " Some, no doubt." 
 
 " Most," said the young man, with a tragic 
 sententiousness. 
 
 Miss Oglevie glanced at him inquiringly, 
 but Dick walked on in silence, his eyes 
 turned moodily earthward. Margaret felt 
 that their talk had started on a wrong track, 
 and resolved to turn it in another direction.
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 253 
 
 So presently she began speaking of some 
 story by a well-known writer, which was 
 then in course of publication in a magazine, 
 and which everybody was supposed to be 
 reading. Did Dick like it ? No, he didn't. 
 What did she think of it herself? Think ? 
 Nothing at all. One didn't think of such a 
 thing. The writer certainly had not ; why 
 should the reader? How did he guess it 
 would end ? 
 
 ** As far as we've got at present," said 
 Dick, " it seems to me even betting whether 
 the heroine will turn Jew and elope with 
 the money-lender, or act like a Christian 
 and bolt with the Bishop." 
 
 Margaret laughed. 
 
 " I think you are rather sarcastic," she 
 said. " But then the story is amazingly 
 silly, no doubt. Why do people write who 
 have no sort of vocation, no spark of ability, 
 for such work ? I see the Saturday and
 
 254 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 Athenceum perpetually putting this query ; 
 but of making many books there is no end, 
 notwithstanding. Papa says nowadays per- 
 sons call themselves men of letters who have 
 not even mastered the A B C of their art. 
 What I should like to have established with 
 regard to literature is some such arrangement 
 as prevails in the dear old fairy tales, where 
 the suitors compete for the hand of the 
 Princess and lose their heads if they fail to 
 solve the three enigmatical questions set them. 
 The novelist's three volumes should represent 
 the three questions, and if they failed at 
 these " 
 
 (Here Margaret slightly bowed her head, 
 and drew the edge of her hand significantly 
 across the back of her neck.) 
 
 " And if they succeeded ?" said Dick. 
 
 " If they succeeded, they should marry 
 the fair and lovely princess, of course — or at 
 least have some equivalent award. Such a
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 255 
 
 plan would give us enough good novels, and 
 relieve us of more than enough bad novelists. 
 Literary aspirants would know the penalty 
 of non-success, and only the ablest would 
 venture to go up for examination. The 
 main difficulty, I fancy, would be in electing 
 judges competent to decide on the passing 
 — or ' ploughing,' don't you say ? — of the 
 candidates." 
 
 When Margaret Oglevie spoke on any 
 subject she was interested in, she generally 
 had the gift of interesting her hearers also, 
 for she spoke with freshness and enthusiasm. 
 Once fairly started (as now) on so congenial 
 a topic as that of books and their belongings, 
 she could hold her own in a conversation of 
 almost any length, her varied reading and 
 critical appreciation of things read making 
 her remarks really worthy tlie utterance. 
 For a while our hero hearkened to the 
 voice of the charmer with comparative
 
 256 ELIOT THE YOUNGER. 
 
 unheedfulness, nor readily came forth from 
 the morbid self-engrossment which had 
 latterly possessed him. Like Hawthorn's 
 Coverdale, he was an epicure of his own 
 emotions, and naturally exaggerated the 
 sentiments of youthful love and despair it 
 had been his fate to experience, giving them, 
 respectively, heights and depths which were 
 truly sublime. He felt, and fostered, a 
 kind of melancholy pride in that he had 
 done, borne, and suffered something beyond 
 the average of his years, and flatteringly 
 regarded himself as a person of painfully 
 romantic interest. But, despite his tragic 
 heart history, the birds sang, and the sun 
 shone, and Margaret Oglevie talked ; and 
 before long he found himself lending ear 
 unto her speech with involuntary relish." 
 
 She spoke of prose authors and poets, of 
 living singers and the '' dead kings of 
 melody," of writers grave and of writers gay
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 257 
 
 — and all with as much sympathy and 
 sincerity, as much spontaneous ardour and 
 affection, as the generality of young woman- 
 hood reserves for new bonnets, new babies, 
 and the like. Not that she was without a 
 natural feminine sentiment both for bonnets 
 and babies ; but this sentiment was neither 
 ostentatious nor paramount with her. Her 
 predilection was rather that of the gentle 
 clerke of Oxenford : 
 
 " For him was lever han at his beddes heed 
 A-twenty bookes clothed blak and reed."* 
 
 Hitherto Dick had never known a woman 
 
 talk in this wise, and it astonished and 
 
 attracted him not a little. For an Oxonian, 
 
 * As some partial indication of Miss Oglevie's literary 
 favouritism at this time, we may mention that the couple of 
 small shelves wontedly hanging at her " beddes heed " 
 actually did contain a score of books ; and that, of this 
 number, poetry was represented by Shakspeare, Browning, 
 Percy's "Reliques," and the Bible, whilst prose found 
 expression in sundry volumes of Swift and De Quincy, 
 ditto of Thackeray and George Eliot, Lamb's " Essays," and 
 Holmes' " Autocrat." 
 
 VOL. T. 17
 
 258 ELIOT THE YOUNGEB. 
 
 he was by no means ill-read himself — 
 especially among our later poets — but, some- 
 what to his chagrin, he found that his ac- 
 quaintance with general literature beside 
 that of his companion was nothing better 
 than conventional. In other words, he knew 
 as much about it, as a whole, as a Pope's bull 
 may be said to know of oilcake. 
 
 In the wood at Idlewlld was a glade, 
 and in this glade had been consumed the 
 luncheons of successive picnic-parties time 
 out of mind. Here Belinda had come, in 
 hoops and patches, and, seated on the green 
 sward with Sir Plume at her feet, had dis- 
 cussed sentiment and salad, the blue sky 
 above her, and the black ant beneath. Here 
 had Corydon sported with Amaryllis in the 
 shade, heedless alike of earwigs and the 
 maternal dread of damp. Lads and lasses — 
 puellce puerique — had eaten, drunk, and been 
 merry in this leafy spot through many a
 
 CONVALHSCENCK 259 
 
 bright bygone day ; and the fragments of 
 many an al fresco feast had fallen to the 
 resident birds and squirrels. It was a place 
 that almost seemed made for taking rest and 
 refreshment in ; at once sheltered, picturesque, 
 and softly turfed. 
 
 On the present occasion the party was a 
 decided success. It forgot its mustard, 
 mislaid its corkscrew, brought insufficient 
 bread — a mere Falstaffian farthing's-worth 
 in proportion to its supply of wine ! — and 
 upset its sours among its sweets according to 
 the established wont. 
 
 Some interesting discoveries were thus 
 made of the secret affinities of ingredients 
 hitherto held antagonistic ; and Charles Eliot 
 broached the theory that currant jelly was 
 first mated with mutton through the happy 
 accident of being thrown together at a picnic, 
 adducing, as a pai'allel piece of chance revela- 
 tion, the excellence of the preserved ginger 
 
 17—2
 
 260 ELIOT THE YOVNGER. 
 
 and pigeon-pie which had casually fore- 
 gathered on his plate. 
 
 Amidst the general animation and merri- 
 ment of this midday meal, our hero was 
 somewhat absent-minded. His talk with 
 Margaret Oglevie, brief as it was, had given 
 him much food for thought ; had touched his 
 sympathies, kindled his imagination, and left 
 him with new-born perceptions of intellectual 
 life stirring in his brain. Many of us, pro- 
 bably, can remember when some such 
 influence first came to us — whether from 
 man or woman, or the chance reading- of a 
 book — and can recall how, from that hour, 
 the aspect of things began to alter to our eyes ; 
 how the old beliefs and preferences dropped 
 from us, one after another — discarded for .the 
 burning and shining lights that a wider- 
 reaching vision revealed us. 
 
 For a while we are bewildered by the 
 sudden flash of perceptive power, full of shift-
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 261 
 
 ing doubts and distrust. The familiar 
 objects of faith we have cherished aforetime 
 satisfy us no longer ; we detect their flaws 
 and deficiencies ; and we stretch forth 
 eagerly in search of something to lay hold of 
 and stand by, something to take the place of 
 the dethroned loves and banished confidences 
 of yesterday. 
 
 Whoso has known such phase of intellec- 
 tual experience as we have thus roughly in- 
 dicated, will perhaps understand something of 
 Dick Eliot's preoccupation at this time. Mrs. 
 Allan Dale, noticing him standing aloof with 
 idle hands, incontinently beckoned him to her 
 assistance. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Richard, pray come and help 
 me 1 Have you a corkscrew ? No ? Then 
 loill you cut this ham for me ? So many 
 people with cold veal, j^'ou see ; and all at a 
 standstill for want of ham. It's too absurd, 
 really 1"
 
 262 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 *'But I can't carve," said Dick, absently 
 taking the knife and fork held out to 
 him. 
 
 " That doesn't matter at all. Please cut 
 it ! You can't make any mistake." 
 
 This was to be proved. 
 
 Dick mechanically drooped on his knees 
 before the task assigned him, and went 
 through a preliminary act of pig-sticking by 
 driving the fork overhand into the yielding 
 crest of the huge uncut ham, that erewhile 
 had graced the pride and paragon of the sty 
 at Little Upton. 
 
 Next he proceeded to use the knife ; but 
 his thoughts were far from his work, and 
 instead of slicina: delicatelv downward in the 
 orthodox fashion, he caused his weapon to 
 describe a lateral movement from right to 
 left, carving, in fact, as one would carve a 
 round of beef. The consequence was, he 
 produced a succession of slices of pure
 
 CONVALESCENCi:. 263 
 
 unqualified fat ; and it was whilst calmly 
 pursuing this novel course of cutting (which, 
 had something soothing and satisfactory to 
 his mind, in the ease wherewith the knife- 
 blade passed through the unresisting flesh) 
 that Oscar Dale accosted him, Miss Oglevie's 
 plate in his hand. 
 
 " Some ham, Dick, for a lady ; so just look 
 sharp !" 
 
 " Does she like lean ? or — I'm afraid this 
 ham is rather fat," said Dick, suddenly coming 
 down from the clouds. 
 
 Mr. Dale adjusted his eye-glass, and bent 
 over the dish for critical examination. 
 
 " It does look fat ; one of Allan's wretched 
 prize-pigs perhaps. Keally, I think I never 
 saw so much fat on a ham before !" 
 
 " It's nothing else," said Dick, making 
 another circular slice, and eying it with 
 growing disgust. "What's the matter? 
 What the deuce are you laughing at ?"
 
 264 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 "Well," exclaimed Mr. Dale, with sup- 
 pressed mirth, " this beats cock-fighting ! 
 beats — beats carpets ! beats everything ! 
 Why, man alive! look how you've been 
 cutting it ! — the unkindest cut of all, by 
 Jove !" 
 
 Dick did look, and an expression of blank 
 dismay gradually overspread his features. 
 
 " Good heavens ! What in the world will 
 Mrs. Allan think ! You won't split on me, 
 will you. Dale ? What's to be done ? Let's 
 hide the wretched thing away among the fern 
 there, and say — say " 
 
 " Say two she-bears came out of the wood 
 and eat it all up ?" suggested Mr. Dale, 
 glibly. " I'm afraid that won't wash, young 
 man ! — story's been tried before. No, no I 
 Keep on cutting, and you'll get at the lean 
 directly ; then we can sort it in with the rest, 
 and perhaps nobody '11 notice." 
 
 So Dick Eliot sliced away with the despe-
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 265 
 
 rate energy of despair, and, screened from 
 observation by his unscrupulous companion, 
 succeeded in consummating his atrocity 
 undetected. But it effectually opened his 
 eyes to the danger of day-dreaming in society, 
 and for the remainder of the afternoon he 
 contrived to keep sufficiently wide awake for 
 ordinary requirements. 
 In the late September, 
 
 " That shades its sad eyes from the rising sun, 
 And weeps at eve because the day is done,"J 
 
 the hours of light and warmth are of but 
 brief duration ; and, warned by the breeding 
 mists and falling dew, Mr. Dale's party was 
 early in breaking up. 
 
 A majority of his guests tarried at Idlewild 
 for five o'clock tea ; but these did not prolong 
 their stay, and by shortly after six all had 
 departed save the Eliots and Oglevies, who 
 had been persuaded to remain to dinner.
 
 266 ELIOT TEE TOUNGER. 
 
 It was a pleasant repast, this same dinner ; 
 as such impromptu gatherings are often apt to 
 be. There was plenty of humorous comment 
 on the day's events from Mr. Eliot, Margaret 
 Oglevie, and Oscar Dale ; some not ill- 
 natured sarcasm from Kalph Oglevie ; much 
 confidential criticism between the two 
 matrons ; and a fund of able listening on the 
 part of our hero. Under oath of secresy, and 
 with Dick's tacit consent, Mr. Dale privately 
 imparted to Miss Oglevie a highly dramatic 
 version of his young friend's dealings with 
 the unhappy ham from Little Upton, whereby 
 the lady's gravity was sorely tried ; and, on 
 the subsequent ride home, her father found 
 occasion to remonstrate seriously with her 
 upon the habit of apparently causeless 
 laughter which she seemed in danger of 
 contracting. 
 
 In the drawing-room, after dinner, the 
 small party of seven became divided (like the
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 267 
 
 *' all Gaul " of his school-days' Csesar, mused 
 Dick) into three parts. 
 
 This arrano'ement was brouo-ht about 
 accidentally. Mr. Oglevie invited Charles 
 Eliot to a game of chess, and that gentleman, 
 protesting against the mental exertion, but 
 influenced, as he explained, by the acquiescent 
 philosophy of the newly-dined, accepted the 
 challenge. Oscar Dale looked on ; at inter- 
 vals addressing himself to his remaining 
 guests. Of these, Mrs. Eliot and Mrs. Dale 
 were seated on the couch by the fireside, 
 talking domestic " shop," whilst Miss 
 Oglevie and our hero were at the piano in the 
 small inner chamber, which, by looping back 
 the curtains at its arched entry, formed a 
 convenient supplement to the larger room. 
 
 Dick had a very real feeling for music (as 
 Margaret Oglevie soon discovered), and a 
 heart that would " throb to the gathered 
 grieving of Beethoven, sway to the light
 
 268 ELIOT THE YOUNGEE. 
 
 coquetting of Mozart " with the keenest and 
 readiest response. 
 
 After awhile his companion tried him with 
 Chopin, and Dick heard the subtle harmonies 
 of this most rarely poetic of composers for the 
 first time. He was entranced. The strange 
 yearning passion and pathos of nocturne and 
 sonata held him spellbound. Longing and 
 tender regret, wild questioning and weird 
 prophecy, sorrow, and struggle and aspiration 
 were in the music, bearing one along on the 
 devious tide of tone under troubled skies, and 
 by dim wind-vexed woods and the voiceful 
 haunts of men. 
 
 There are some unfortunates — people 
 sluggish of sense, " whose blood is very 
 snow-broth" — to whom music is a mere 
 mechanical combination of sounds, tickling 
 the ear, but leaving the soul untouched. 
 Alas, for these oyster-hearted ones ! How 
 •shall they appreciate Paradise ?
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 269- 
 
 " That's a very pretty piece you've just 
 played us, Miss Oglevie," said Mrs. Dale, 
 looking round, with a gracious smile, as the 
 music ceased. " Thank you so much ! There 
 are times, you know, when that kind of thing 
 suits one to a nicety." 
 
 To a nicety ! Dick winced, and glanced 
 first at Margaret Oglevie, then at Oscar Dale, 
 who at the moment had approached the piano. 
 
 Mr. Dale shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Some one," said he reflectively — " Victor 
 Hugo, I think — once remarked of the utter- 
 ance of a fellow-poet that it made him 
 experience a new sort of shudder ; and really 
 there are certain expressions — Well, well ! 
 my cousin (bless her) is no musician, Miss 
 Oglevie. You were playing Chopin, were 
 you not ? I saw it written of him the other 
 day that he could no more prick down a com- 
 monplace idea than could Milton a platitude,. 
 or Bacon a paradox."
 
 270 ELIOT TEE YOUNGER. 
 
 " I like that 1" said Margaret. 
 
 " Won't you go on playing V petitioned 
 Mr. Dale. " Please do ; and let us hear his 
 * Marche Funebre,' if you have it. I've not had 
 a chance of listening to it since I left Paris." 
 
 Somehow or other, Mr. Dale's arrival at 
 the piano appeared to Dick to act as an 
 eclipse. It seemed to put him in the shade. 
 For Mr. Dale evinced an enviable familiarity 
 with all those wonderful lights of art and 
 song which as yet were unknown gods to our 
 hero, although evidently reverenced as dii 
 majores by Miss Oglevie. 
 
 In her Olympus the deities were other than 
 Dick in his simplicity had worshipped ; and 
 the names of Browning and Leighton, of Pater, 
 Morris, Possetti, Burne Jones, Blake, Chopin, 
 and the like, evoked no divine associations in 
 his mind. Hence, the latter part of the 
 evening, satisfactory enough to two of our 
 trio — as deep they went 
 
 1
 
 CONVALESCENCE. 271 
 
 " — into the merit 
 Of this and that distinguished spirit " 
 
 — was scarcely so pleasurable to the third. 
 He was mortified at discovering how much 
 he was wholly ignorant of, and vowed in his 
 heart that he would not again be thus placed 
 a,t a disadvantage. 
 
 Apparently Margaret Oglevie divined some- 
 thing of his feeling, for presently she broke 
 short her discussion with Mr. Dale, and ad- 
 dressed herself to Dick. Her parting words, 
 moreover, were a reminder to him of his 
 promise to call at The Coppice ere returning 
 to Oxford. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTEBS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
 
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